Harassment in gaming

[Umbran]

I think you may have previously banned this person from the thread?

Good point. He can't respond, and that's not fair. My apologies.

 

[MechaPilot]

I think you may have previously banned this person from the thread?

If that's accurate then I apologize as well. I hadn't realized that poster had been banned from the thread.

 

[Rygar]

I think you may have previously banned this person from the thread?



I think there's a bit more to it than that--most consumer-facing companies today are betting that their brands will benefit by adopting some of the trappings of progressivism, and wotc is certainly not an exception. Surely some companies see this as a localization issue, but I'd bet cold, hard cash that others--especially ones HQ'd in coastal US cities--are sincere to the point where they'd willingly deny themselves a reasonable amount of profit to stick with their ideals.

AFAIK, which camp WotC falls into is anybody's guess.

There's really just mass confusion in the business world right now. For the past 5-7 years since Facebook became huge "Common sense" was that social media is the thing to watch and if you master it you get enourmous profits, it's the new "Commercial". So businesses have assumed that whatever's trending on sites like Twitter and Facebook must be what "everyone" thinks.

The thing that's throwing them is, many of these places are subject to the same weaknesses that allow forums to devolve. People with specific agendas in positions of power are able to alter the composition and therefor the message of a given platform by selectively removing individuals to silence opposing viewpoints. People with specific agendas can make a message seem more supported than it is by creating shill accounts. People very experienced with community manipulation can not only make a message seem more supported than it is with shill accounts, they can also use "Burners" to incite opposition to the point where they get banned by even neutral mods.

Those kinds of things have been going on for a while now, moreso on some platforms than others, but they are manipulated by very dedicated activists. So businesses are jumping on this progressivism political movement and things are happening that defy common sense. "Sunset" for example, was a video game hailed by progressives as the model video games should aspire to, and it sold just 4,000 copies in its first month and its studio disbanded. Meanwhile Dead or Alive 3 Extreme, the antithesis of progressivism, broke import records when Japan said it wasn't going to localize it for the U.S. due to the political climate.

Then there's Protein World that ran an ad that fell afoul of activists for being sexist, the activists held protests, and conventional wisdom in the business world said "you apologize or suffer horrible consequences", but Protein World did not. They then had record breaking sales.

The business world is confused to no end, If Social Media is representative of the population at large then none of these events should've happened. But these things did happen, and the business world has no idea what to do now. So yes, some of them are adopting trappings of progressivism with the hope that it makes them more money, but just as many are finding that being anti-progressive is lucrative. It'll still be a year or two before we can definitively state which approach is more lucrative though.

 

[dd.stevenson]

The business world is confused to no end, If Social Media is representative of the population at large then none of these events should've happened. But these things did happen, and the business world has no idea what to do now. So yes, some of them are adopting trappings of progressivism with the hope that it makes them more money, but just as many are finding that being anti-progressive is lucrative. It'll still be a year or two before we can definitively state which approach is more lucrative though.

There have always been businesses willing to sacrifice money in order to stay true to their ideals, and there always will be. Make no mistake, though, they're not all "progressive" ideals.

Even though it's fascinating, I don't mean to have a wide-ranging discussion about marketing and branding during times of social change as I don't really think that stuff is super appropriate to EnWorld. The counterpoint I want to raise in response to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is that corporations are not always 100% soulless profit-seeking machines, and a reasonable person is indeed free to suspect that certain brands (for example, D&D) are on occasion being leveraged for political activism rather than corporate profit.

 

[Hussar]

Meh. Given the options - supporting activism out of ideology or supporting activism in search for more profits, I'd say corporations are more likely to pursue the latter.

 

[MechaPilot]

The counterpoint I want to raise in response to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is that corporations are not always 100% soulless profit-seeking machines. . .

While that is true, it's always important to recall that all corporations ultimately have to answer to their shareholders, which is why the vast majority of corporate decisions that are not compliance-oriented in nature are profit-oriented. Whenever a corporation chooses to do something that decreases profit (thereby not increasing retained earnings/stock value, or decreasing both the cash available for dividend distribution and E&P for classifying distributions as dividends for the preferential tax rate), they always run the risk of running afoul of the shareholders (most of whom probably hold the stock for either growth value or dividend income purposes).

In the case of a subsidiary, like WotC, you effectively have two layers of shareholders you have to appease: the management at the parent company (i.e. Hasbro), and then Hasbro's shareholders who indirectly own WotC.

I would also like to reiterate my earlier point about the degree of change in the game itself. The only two changes in the game itself that I have seen that appear to target specific demographics are these:

1) the lifting of the restriction on female PC Str scores, and
2) the mention of trangendered and non-heterosexual characters in the 5e rules.

I'm not altogether certain when the first change occurred (was it before WotC acquired the brand?): TV Tropes claims that it was part of 1st edition, during the TSR era, but I'm not about to quote TV Tropes as gospel. If we assume for the sake of discussion that the first change occurred with the printing of the 2e basic set (in 1981), that's one demographic-oriented rules change and one demographic-oriented descriptive change over the course of two corporate owners and 35 years of publication.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I would also like to reiterate my earlier point about the degree of change in the game itself. The only two changes in the game itself that I have seen that appear to target specific demographics are these:

1) the lifting of the restriction on female PC Str scores, and
2) the mention of trangendered and non-heterosexual characters in the 5e rules.

I'm not altogether certain when the first change occurred (was it before WotC acquired the brand?): TV Tropes claims that it was part of 1st edition, during the TSR era, but I'm not about to quote TV Tropes as gospel. If we assume for the sake of discussion that the first change occurred with the printing of the 2e basic set (in 1981), that's one demographic-oriented rules change and one demographic-oriented descriptive change over the course of two corporate owners and 35 years of publication.

If we're talking specifics, then I think there's a pretty tenable argument that, pre-change, these game rules had had the trappings of reactionary advocacy, and that by updating them the companies were simply following their interests by widening the market for their products.

Either way, the point remains that "corporations don't do advocacy so your suspicions are unfounded" isn't a great argument.

 

[Deset Gled]

I would also like to reiterate my earlier point about the degree of change in the game itself. The only two changes in the game itself that I have seen that appear to target specific demographics are these:
...
If we assume for the sake of discussion that the first change occurred with the printing of the 2e basic set (in 1981), that's one demographic-oriented rules change and one demographic-oriented descriptive change over the course of two corporate owners and 35 years of publication.

I can think of a few other game mechanics that seem relevant to this point:

1. The effect "Character’s gender changes" is listed as a random effect for a cursed item (2e and 3.x, possibly other editions as well).

2. In 3.x, there were a small number of Prestige Classes that were available only to females. There was one PrC that was only available to eunuchs. There were no official PrCs that were exclusive to (intact) males.

3. In 1e, there was the infamous table for random Harlot generation, including such possibilities as "wanton wench" and "aged madam".

Do you view any of these as sexist? There's also third party stuff, like The Book of Erotic Fantasy, but I don't know if that's relevant.

 

[MechaPilot]

I can think of a few other game mechanics that seem relevant to this point:

1. The effect "Character’s gender changes" is listed as a random effect for a cursed item (2e and 3.x, possibly other editions as well).

2. In 3.x, there were a small number of Prestige Classes that were available only to females. There was one PrC that was only available to eunuchs. There were no official PrCs that were exclusive to (intact) males.

3. In 1e, there was the infamous table for random Harlot generation, including such possibilities as "wanton wench" and "aged madam".

Do you view any of these as sexist? There's also third party stuff, like The Book of Erotic Fantasy, but I don't know if that's relevant.

I'd like to tackle the mechanics you mentioned in reverse order:

#3) I think that the exclusion of the random harlot table is not about sexism or making social change so much as it is about making the game more profitable by making it more accessible to a broader age range of potential customers. Plus, a parent might be more likely to refuse to buy D&D books for a child if they see things in the glossary or index such as "random harlot table."

#2) I don't recall seeing any prestige classes that weren't available to both genders. That said, I didn't have a massive collection of books for 3e, so there may have been some that existed in books that I never owned.

#1) While I can see your point, I also think that both 4e and 5e have largely cut back on cursed items in general. I can't remember seeing a cursed item in 4e, and I have yet to run across one while DM'ing 5e. I think this is more related to a move away from cursed items than it is omitting a change in genders from any list of potential curse effects.

Personally, I'm of two minds about point #1. I don't think that being any specific gender is a curse in and of itself. However, I think the gender-changing curse is somewhat ill-described in that it (to the best of my recollection) just says the character's gender changes. Does that include both the character's sexual characteristics and gender identity? Or, does that just include sexual characteristics? I think that these questions weren't so fully considered when gender-changing was a potential curse effect. That said, I know some transgender people who have suffered depression almost to the point of suicide. If your sexual characteristics changed but your gender identity didn't, the pain and depression of that mismatch could very much be said to be a curse.

Regarding the BoEF, I actually own a copy and like it. Although, I will freely confess that its strength is not in its crunch. The beginning part about handling sex in an RPG, discussing allowed game content in terms of comparable film ratings, and discussing different concepts of marriage and divorce, as well as the section discussing magical charm and consent are definitely good.

 

[delericho]

The only two changes in the game itself that I have seen that appear to target specific demographics are these:

1) the lifting of the restriction on female PC Str scores, and
2) the mention of trangendered and non-heterosexual characters in the 5e rules.

I'm not altogether certain when the first change occurred (was it before WotC acquired the brand?): TV Tropes claims that it was part of 1st edition, during the TSR era, but I'm not about to quote TV Tropes as gospel. If we assume for the sake of discussion that the first change occurred with the printing of the 2e basic set (in 1981)

The gender-specific ability score maxima were introduced in the 1st Edition PHB in 1978 (possibly in The Dragon before that) and were removed in the 2nd Edition PHB in 1989. I don't think they ever appeared in the D&D (as opposed to AD&D) line.

that's one demographic-oriented rules change and one demographic-oriented descriptive change over the course of two corporate owners and 35 years of publication.

Not quite - the 2nd Ed PHB also made exclusive use of the masculine pronouns, and had a sidebar early on explaining why they felt this was appropriate. With 3e they used both 'he' and 'she', largely tying those to the Iconics (that is, the iconic Wizard was female, so any time they referred to a Wizard they used 'she'; the iconic Fighters were male, so any time they referred to a Fighter they used 'he'). For 4e they dropped the iconics, but I think continued alternating 'he' and 'she'.