Another Woman In Gaming Flees Home Following Death Threats

[KitSileya]

172. Yeah, these cretins need to be run out of the gaming community on rails,

tarred and feathered. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) It is very, very important that we gamers all speak up and clearly state that we want more varied games, that we want games with non-pornified female protagonists, that we want diversity and variety in our games. Look at Dragon Age, with its successful choice between male and female characters, with its options for romance and so on. It is possible to do it. We must give games with 'unconventional' characters (women, persons of color, differently abled protagonists) an equal chance, which means not immediately and only blaming the fact that the game had a main character who happened to be a woman if it should happen to have limited success.

The cretins are at the 'then they fight you' stage of development - first they tried to ignore us, then they laughed at us, and now they use every dirty, unethical and sociopathic trick in the book to fight us. While they hare clearly on the losing side of the debate, that doesn't mean we can assume the battle is won. The death threats are no less scary for knowing that those who make them are desperate - rather the opposite. Elliott Rodger were of their ilk, and he put words into action, and we must be very aware that all the women in the gaming community are very aware that this is a possibility with them too. I can assure you that hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of women who want to contribute to the gaming community with game development, game analysis, game reviews, and all sorts of other things think long and hard before they start, because they know the price of admission is so very, very high. Many of them choose not to contribute because of it, and so all of us lose out on insightful work because of these cretins,a nd their supporters, those who do not think it is 'their business; that women should grow a thinker skin, just ignore them and they'll go away' as well as the luke-warm opposers to these cretins.