goio's great community

[Lydia Litvyak]

Like everybody else who's been playing for more than a few weeks, I really love goio's community. I love how things are structured (for now) such that getting to know all the other regular players is inevitable, and how social the game is while remaining a serious competitive game. But I feel like the community has an overblown opinion of how inclusive it is, particularly when it comes to women.

I'm going to be blunt here: I get catcalled, told to suck various parts of people's anatomy, and have graphic things said about my body more in goio than I do in dota. You know, the game full of racist, misogynistic 14 year olds? Yeah, that dota. And while it pains me to say this, no one here seems at all interested in fixing this. As far as I can tell, making sure female players feel safe is secondary to making sure toxic, aggressive male players feel welcomed. I've had people threaten to rape me or other female players with mods or even muse employees literally in the lobby listening to it happen and to my knowledge nothing was ever done about it. If it was, it was only after it was way too late anyway.

The backlash to the girls of icarus event is just another aspect of this. One of the ideas behind it is to give female players a chance to play without having to worry about that stuff happening, and to connect with other people who they can talk about these issues with. But the community as a whole has reacted by lampooning it, decrying it as sexist, and making fun of it in lobby chat. Female-only events or subgroups are not unheard of, and many other communities have collectively acknowledged that they're a pretty reasonable thing to have. Why not goio?

It's like half the guys in this community are more upset at the idea of me wanting to be able to play without getting threatened or catcalled than they are at the reality of me getting threatened and catcalled.

I guess what I'm saying here is that I'm really disappointed. I like you guys, and I want to believe you're better than this.

[Queso]

Unfortunately moderation is nowhere near as prevalent as it should be. If a mod ever see this, or you contact a mod or Muse member, we'll take it very seriously. Reports are the best tool we have right now to track this sort of behavior. If you get yourself and others to report it, it might not make the problem go away immediately, but it will help prevent that person from doing it in the future. If we don't see it, there isn't too much we can do. I'll do what I can to keep our CAs and Mods aware of it and more pro-active about moderating this type of behavior. If you have any issues in game with players, CAs, Mods, or Muse feel free to email abuse@musegames.com. We take any emails sent there very seriously.

[Skrimskraw]

It is as easy for a male player to be offended by being compared or even put into the same group of people by referring to them as a whole unit. Like it is offending some female players with sexual slander and other negative comments. If you are refferring to the morg post in the pit. It is a joke on the separation of the sexeaand a spoof on how misandric that idea actually is. Like being called men as a whole group and being referred to as being exhausting to play with, you know the girla before boys idea in it. Tbh we dont care if you play woth the girls.  However like i am offended from bebeing insinuated to being called misoganistic.  Some female players are also offended by other female players doing that.

[Lydia Litvyak]

queso: I know. I try to report everyone who does this. But there have been times when a mod or a muse employee was in the lobby or was brought in while it was happening and still nothing was done. I have every faith that you are doing your best but clearly things are not working as they should.

skrim: this is exactly what I am talking about. when we talk about this stuff, you guys react with "it's so mean of you to imply that /my/ community could be misogynistic!" instead of acknowledging that we have a problem and that you need to be a part of the solution. I have a lot of respect for you but I am sure you can imagine how depressing it is to make a post about how the community seems more open to misogynists than to people who complain about them and have a moderator respond with "well, it's offensive of you to imply that some men here are misogynistic". Is "some people here you share superficial traits with are bad people" really comparable to graphic threats and harassment? I did not even refer to male players as a whole, so why are you so eager to identify with and defend the bad apples?

[B'Elanna]

Being in this community for a year I have tried posting on this forum 3 times:

• Rape Jokes
  A simple reminder not to use the word "rape" to equate sexual violence with someone's achievement
  Male Players were attacking me, threatening me, contemplating the ways I may or may not have been sexually abused to take such offence and mocking the very point I was trying to make.
  - October 08, 2013, 05:30:45 pm : posted
  - October 09, 2013, 05:50:01 pm : locked
  

  The cause for which this topic was started was good, but the discussion has turned in the wrong direction entirely.
  This thread is locked, and the offending posts have been removed.

  24 hours
  
  
• Girls of Icarus Online
  A suggestion to have a better network for women to connect to other female gamers of this community.
  The 3 kind of comments men made:
  a) "LOL if I wear a skirt do I count "
  b) "That's sexist, why is it always about gender with you "
  c) "Aaaaaaw are the women emancipating themselves? that's sho cuuuute"
  The rest held a council amongst each other contemplating weather or not they were approving.
  Not counting the worst comments that were removed, filled with accusations, insults and sexist slurs.
  Women stopped responding in the threat and started approaching me about it in private, to avoid the argument or not to out themselves
  This threat was made for women to reach out, and the responses to it didn't invite women, it scared them off.
  - January 23, 2014, 01:39:36 pm : posted.
  - January 24, 2014, 12:02:01 am : CA had to get involved, comments were removed
  

  Is this the point at which I state we should keep this civil?
  
  Yes it is, please keep this thread civilized, if you want to have an argument about gender equality then take it to the pm's. I'd rather not have this thread be full of argument and counter-argument.
  

  - January 24, 2014, 04:00:13 am : CA threatened to lock the threat, comments were removed
  

  Please don't make us lock this thread. It's a great idea as stated by others but the few are going to ruin it.
  
  You realize by your negativity you're only killing the community you're all pledging stating to enjoy.

  - January 24, 2014, 12:51:44 pm : developers involved themselves, comments were removed.
  

  This is not a thread to discuss sexism.  This is a call to players who would like to play together.  In this case, it is a call to female gamers who want to play together.
  
  Show your support (no matter what sex you identify with), sign up with them, make friends.  This is all acceptable behavior in this thread.  Please keep the discussion focused to the topic at hand.
  
  If you have problems about this group existing, don't discuss it here in this thread, do it in your own time and outside of Guns.  Muse does not discriminate and we do not tolerate inappropriate behavior (bigotry, sexism, bullying, just to name a few).  In fact, this is a great initiative since it's promoting groups of people making friends.  We're all about making friends.  Never impede on someone's ability to make friends.  Please think twice about posting your comments here.
  
  When in doubt, don't post at all.
  
  Thank you

  
  10 hours to be threatened to be shut down, 18 hours for a dev to have to voice MUSE's approval for the harassments to stop.
  
  
• BORG Gaming Nights.
  Since my initial friendly invite post was so swamped with boys contemplating sexism for the first time in their lives because this time it was affecting them, and women were actively avoiding it, I posted an open invite to one night a month where I'd be up for playing games anyway for fellow women to join me in my misery.
  I KNEW there would be backlash, and I chose my words very carefully.
  After longer consideration I chose to address this invite only to the people it was ment to be for, and not apologise and justify, yet I left you with an image with an adorable fat little B'Elanna explaining to you:
  "Please try to respect that online games are still a very male dominated environment and although men are our friends, women also need their own space"
  Since I learn form my mistakes this time I locked the conversation making it a silent invite.
  There was nothing to comment on. I was gonna play that time and women were invited to join me.
  So I thought...
  - September 16, 2014, 07:54:06 pm : posted
  - September 17, 2014, 07:00:55 am : Mezhu's MORG post was made.
  12 hours
  

This Post was supposed to mock my efforts of offering a safe space for women, by jokingly offering and therefore creating an environment to perpetuate sexist stereotypes.
In itself it tried to copy me and then make fun of my unnecessary "misandric" exclusivity.
While the "B" in BORG stands for "bunch" I have yet to wonder what the "M" stands for, but my guess is as good as anyone's.
Furthermore it describes a list of things fellow men need to live up to to prove their worthiness:

Only people with an average hair body density of 10 hair/cm2 allowed.
Must yell a lot, punch stuff in anger whenever losing and make forced sex jokes at least once a minute.
Must be confident in own genitalia size and possibly brag about it in public.
Must be into sports. (tennis, volley, chess and the like do not count).
Must drink scotch and smoke cigars on a daily basis and preferably during events.
Muscles are not a must but are definitely a plus. Moustache can work as an alternative, bonus points for full-grown beards.
Must enjoy pornographic material.
Strictly straight-only. If not, at least act like it.
Any word of cooking and shopping (exuding arms) will result to an irrevocable permanent ban from our little community.

While my invitation made it clear all women were included.
Using words like "female socialised" and "female identified" to make sure trans*women knew they were included, not only that but also without the need to out themselves. women are women.
And the only positive thing I can say about that is that AT LEAST no one ruined this silent trust to not abuse this discretion, because I have no idea how to deal with that and I would never ask anyone to PROVE their gender to me, besides it being impossible because gender is a concept and construct.

It's sad enough that men only give a shit about sexism when they feel excluded.
It's worse when they destroy every harmless effort I have to reach out to other female gamers.

Why would you do that? I don't understand.

What actually makes it the worst is that this is known as one of the best gaming communities out there.
This is as good as it gets...

Yet my airship- engineering days are filled with dialogues like:
"Oh you're new. While your Hwacha reloads you can use the Gat on the side. Just count to 14, by the end of it you should be back in the gun to reload the rounds. Heavy for less recoil, burst for mid to short range disable."
a) - "Nice voice changer" disbelieve
b) - "OMG YOU SOUND SO CUTE" objectification
- EITHER WAY: ONE EAR IN THE OTHER OUT

What baffles me is how you care more about the reputation of "not all men" than to just understand that it's a fucking pain in the ass to be objectified, second guessed and sexually harassed all day, and craving female company, which is hard to come by casually.
It's nice to spend time with fellow women who actually see you as a human being.
and yes. I know. /not all men!/

Yet enough. So here we are..

[Dementio]

Isn't there always a problem like this with certain parts of the male community online and even outside the internet? I do not belive one can get rid of these problems by addressing them only in this game since it is a rather general problem. As long as such a general social problem exists there will always be players in GoIO that follow the schema you have described.
Mods and CAs can only do so much (or can they?).

I'm going to be blunt here: I get catcalled, told to suck various parts of people's anatomy, and have graphic things said about my body more in goio than I do in dota.

Perhaps GoIO simply attracts players that happen to do these things a bit more often than the dota people, just like it attracts players that simply don't do these things at all.

[Imagine]

- September 16, 2014, 07:54:06 pm : posted
- September 17, 2014, 07:00:55 am : Mezhu's MORG post was made.
12 hours

Wait that was actually a thing?

Oh ffs, the hell is wrong with people, that's pretty goddamn pathetic.

Well, all I can say is that I'd like to think that while most dudes are alright, the problem is the vocal minority is will pretty much ruin if for everyone else. Sadly, John Gabriel's Greater Internet Theory will still hold true:


Zero consequences (and, honestly, being banned from a game is still pretty much a zero consequence) means some will be at their absolute worst because they can get away with... well basically anything. I think we do a pretty good job of self policing, people who are overly terrible are generally shunned and don't return. There's no... quick fix for this though, so I'm not quite sure what can be done about it in the immediate.

[Spud Nick]

Having played the game for a number of hours I can honestly say that this community is very nasty to one another. If a girl speaks up in lobby chat they are usually harassed in a matter of moments. This normally ends with the girl not talking anymore, or yelling back at them to shut up. If you win the match than the harassment gets a little more personal.

[Skrimskraw]

ok I want to make an apology for how confusing my post was.
Im sorry lydia, i just read it again and i can see how i am not really answering anything.

I am not a woman (just checked ) so I dont know what kind of harrassment you are going through.
however I found these topics in your statement:

1. the male part of the community is misoganists.
2. devs and mods not handling the problem.
3. the response to girl gamers in goio.

to the first topic I want to say this:
the people you talk about you call 14 year old misoganists might be true, i dont know. But I know this: these 14 year old trolls/misoganists is not what I like to call part of our community. This forum is the absolute elite of the community, the users here are people who invest time in the game, share ideas etc. We have a very little amount of verbal slander going on here. Now Im not denying that things are diffrent in the game and not saying that people outside of the forum cant be part of the community. However the trolls ingame the people that are harassing you, will never be respected as part of the community, words spread quickly and Im sure if we had a name calling list of trolls etc. everyone would be careful around these people.

2.
this topic is in relevans to the first one.
before we go further with this I want to make some things clear about devs. There are community devs, and there are programming devs/art devs whatever you call it. the latter is working goio fulltime, programming etc. which is why we rarely see them on their dev accounts, I know they are using other accounts but that is not relevant. These dev do not have the time to deal with player to player problems. this is why we have keyvias and a group of interns, which often switch around. - these are the people that can deal with ingame problems.

however of those devs maybe 3 have the authority or ability to actually handle long term bans... This is a longer process where all reports, direct evidence etc. is taken into account. I can tell you this, its not an easy job for them.

under the devs we have the other interns and the moderators. me being part of both groups can say that it is very limited to what we can do. about 2 months ago we had a large group of ca´s without any ingame powers to enforce code of conduct, but we are currently getting more moderators to handle these situations. However giving a player this sort of power needs to be handled very carefully, you cannot give it to any ca without trust and experience.
But back to the topic. Us moderators are not kick/ban happy, not at all. We are very very careful about every situation and time after time these are the problems I find with ingame player relation problems:
one player is getting trolled, asks for help but has no evidence, or is willing to get it. -not much we can do without seeing what actually happened.
a player is calling a mod to deal with a troll, but is also himself being unreasonable or trolling the other player. -we usually tell both parts to stop, which they do more than often. all i can say here is dont argue back. A simple principal about internet trolling is "never argue with an idiot, he will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience."

When we finally deal with these situations as mods we do a simple. warn, warn, kick, ban procedure. In extreme cases where an entire lobby is at it, we close the lobby. but my point here is simple, nothing is going to happen after we warn or kick. and the reason for that is simple, we can only report them so far, and you have to report them and send screens of what they wrote to back up your evidence. If you dont do these things the handling of the situation doesnt go further after a mod warns or bans. - you can ask Schwerbelastung how many troll players etc. he has talked into behaving better, or ask keyvias how a email written warning effects players to behave better and apologize. It does help if you help us report these players, WITHOUT shouting back at them and giving them reasons to report yourself.

3.
the morg post is a joke.
guys are guys, girls are girls. It is natural for us to band together, because we have more common interests with our own sex than with the other sex. I´m sorry if it offended you, but it´s just a joke about making a group for "real men". We arent against any girls wanting to play with eachother, we just thought it was witty to comment on it and make a satiric joke about it. I cannot say anything than smile at it and start joking with some of us. I know you rydr people like to joke about me forexample.

anyways in the end here I want to say a last thing. Groups of people are usually reffered to as a single individual, like someone saying girl gamers suck, meaning every girl gamer as a whole. This hurts the any persons feelings about being an individual and not being seen as such. goes all ways.

your comment about: "I guess what I'm saying here is that I'm really disappointed. I like you guys, and I want to believe you're better than this." is what I see as such. maybe 99% of the people here on the forum would never harass you ingame, and although you are rightfully entitled to be disappointed in some people, that does not apply to everyone else. Don´t blame all male gamers for doing this, blame the asshole 14 year old misoganists. - its just not nice to be blamed for other peoples mistakes.

[Skrimskraw]

a quick elaboration to what i wrote.

People buy this game, they have the right to play it, we cannot ban everyone breaking the code of conduct.

I forgot to mention that you need to block people who are harassing you. Blocking helps use it.
So always, report and block, and then let it go, not much more you or ca´s can do before a mod handles the problem, if it even needs handling.

[Lydia Litvyak]

I'm sorry skrim, I think you misread--the 14 year old misogynists bit is about dota's community, not goio's. And when I say I am disappointed I mean in the people I like who have decided to start ranting about how stupid BORG gaming night is in front of me, and in the people who have nodded along while they did so. If you have not done that, then I am not talking about you.

While I understand that moderation is difficult and I don't want mods to start being trigger-happy all the time, I do not understand what the purpose of having mods marked in-game is if they do not even have the power to kick a player who is loudly attacking women in front of them. Maybe there is just some lack of clarity in how and when reports are dealt with, but most of the time it feels like everything I send muse just goes off into the void and when I see the offending players again a few days later I have no idea if they have been warned or not.

One thing I will say is that I have had male players step in and tell harassers that their behavior is not acceptable a few times, and that is something I really appreciate.

Isn't there always a problem like this with certain parts of the male community online and even outside the internet? I do not belive one can get rid of these problems by addressing them only in this game since it is a rather general problem. As long as such a general social problem exists there will always be players in GoIO that follow the schema you have described.
Mods and CAs can only do so much (or can they?).

I'm going to be blunt here: I get catcalled, told to suck various parts of people's anatomy, and have graphic things said about my body more in goio than I do in dota.

Perhaps GoIO simply attracts players that happen to do these things a bit more often than the dota people, just like it attracts players that simply don't do these things at all.

Yes, this is a problem in general, and of course there will always be level ones hopping in from CoD to shout abuse after every sale. But that doesn't mean the community in general has to turn a blind eye to everything short of outright threats. When established players send rude PMs and publicly badmouth something as harmless as BORG gaming night it is very hard to trust a community that says nothing to them.

And if GoIO attracts sexists, then that is something we can and should try to fix.

To conclude: of course there will always be some awful level ones, and of course some people will always have ugly opinions. That is exactly what BORG gaming night is for. Making the entire community safe and respectful overnight is not possible, which is why we want an event where we can rely on safety and respect.

[Queso]

I'm going to share this comic, because I think it's a helpful and positive description of how sexism manifests itself and what everyone can do to help prevent it.

http://www.robot-hugs.com/harassment/

[Skrimskraw]

Wait hold on. Goio is not attracting sexists. Like quesos comment most of us just dony see it happen. And we are not denying that it does. However i have seen countless of situations where a player somehow provokes another player. Who responds with racial or  sexist slander. Im not saying that is ok, and im not saying that you are doing this  However as a mod usually this is the situation i meet. A whole lobby ganging up on some player to protect their clan mate or friend, usually by offending him aswell. Its everyone who has to behave. We have all done this and arent proud of it. Its just the easiest way to defend yourself is by attacking others feelings. I think the only option here is to strenghten the mod - muse relations so it gets handled Quick and efficient.

[Keyvias]

Hey Guys,
Just wanted to jump in. I know this is a sensitive subject so if at any time I put my foot in my mouth feel free to call me out and let me know if you believe I'm looking at something the wrong way.
There are a few things I'm massively passionate about and harassment based on gender easily falls into that category.
What a lot of guys are saying has merit, it's the internet, people suck, ect ect, but that's something I've never been comfortable accepting. Reports based on unwanted sexual attention are given a lot focus since I truly want Guns of Icarus to be safe for all players (other than the explosions and destruction.)

I know that it is impossible to completely stop jerks from finding their way into the game and it's an unfortunate side effect that any positive press and player growth will also contain its fair share of assholes, but please block and report these guys. Most of them get one warning because they either leave or never get reported again. Trust me every report is manually handled so if you're reporting a human being is reading and investigating it.

As far as jerks on the forum, again reporting is the best way to get our eyes on it.

As a final note, I don't believe guys are monsters, I don't think Guns attract sexists, I think we attract people. Some people are great, some are terrible, some focus on how issues affect others, some focus on how issues affect only themselves. I do believe we can always do more to make the skies feel more safe and I think a discussion on the topic is not crazy nor unwarranted.
I also believe forums make people defensive and the best way to really talk to a person is through PM's and such, which I and any of the dev team are open to as well if there's something you think we should be doing more/less of.
That isn't to say don't chat about it on forums, just remember when you're writing that the other person probably is writing for an "audience" and not you directly. (Such as some of what I'm writing here)

[Tanya Phenole]

Quick suggestion for some ladies in trouble while no true gentlemen around.
 
- Suck my pepperoni.
-  I prefer them sliced.

- Aren't you supposed to be on kitchen?
- I am. Have they invented wifi in your country yet?


The art of punching away wooing idiots is sophisticated, but very rewarding. Took me ages to realise, but now I am really happier then before. As long as I stopped treating myself a victim, the harassment stopped.  (I know my statements kinda smell with Tom Hobbes theories.) I love insulting back. I love men, who protect me from harassment, and I am not going to put "white knight" label on anyone who is just friendly to me.

Seriosly, the gender problem is giving such a tasty spice to boring engine repairs, do we really have to get rid of it?

Community - the actual community, constant players, - are quite nice guys indeed. None of those people who dared insulting female players in my presence are still playing on regular basis. It is not because I killed them, I promise.