Friday, December 16, 2011



Juxtaposition - there is nothing worse than hypocrisy


After yesterdays' rant, I thought I should give some perspective. I'm normally a fun guy, with a bellowing laugh that is more infectious than bird-flu. I get involved with a lot of different things; log into the SMH website and read the titles given to the blue bar along the top - I'm involved with all of them directly and indirectly. Name a subject and I'll talk to you about it, sometimes insufferably so.


Yesterday I read an excellent blog on sexist behaviour in gaming, by Mark Sorrell. I wholeheartedly agree, and enjoyed his engaging passionate language. Here's my thoughts in response to it.


Myopia - there is nothing worse than sexism


An interesting read. It makes lots of salient and poignant arguments. The comments are worth reading as well.


One thing that struck me though, as it always does in these types of discussions, is summed up in this comment by the author, and it does take a little bit away from an otherwise excellent blog (but not much - read below):


"The best way of framing this that I ever heard was - when a man goes out on a date with a woman, the worst thing that could happen is the woman embarrassing him. When a woman goes out on a date with a man, the worst thing that would happen is that the man could rape and kill her."


By over/underplaying the opponents hand you undervalue the argument. In this example, the bias is clear - there are many other 'worse' things that could happen in both cases. But it is arbitrary (why stop at rape and kill? Why not go even further and say her house could burn down and family die? And that it is her date that struck the match? And so on so forth - reductio ad absurdum in reverse. And all that is to say nothing of the of the obvious opposite possibility that the man be raped and killed and the woman embarrassed) to draw the line in any event.


Sexism is not mutually exclusive, and it is fucked whoever perpetrates or enables it (Jackie-O, I'm looking at you). And for sure, the type and the amount of sexist behaviour and their effects are more prevalent against women. That isn't in contention, nor should it immediately be - the existing studies and stats overwhelmingly support such conclusions.


To downplay the effects against men when they are the victims does no one any favours. However, I don't want to harp on about this too much, as I think Mark deserves more credit and benefit of the doubt (that I may have misread the inference in that comment), as the point I want to get across, which I'm certain Mark would agree with is:


It truly needs to be a fight against sexist behaviour, in any guise, not just that which occurs to women.


An overarching point that can be taken away from Mark's post that is two-fold (the second of which viewers of ABC's Gruen Planet will already be familiar with);


1. Perhaps tackling male -> female sexism is the launch pad to tackling the broader problems with sexism, even outside of insular gaming communities.


2. If we change attitudes, a change in behaviour willmight follow.


For now, I just want to discuss the second of these external to the capsule that is 'sexist male juveniles' before bringing it back around, as is an interesting thought process and I think, the best way of attacking the issue without prejudicial treatment of one group or another.


Cognitive dissonance - there is nothing worse than hypocrisy


It seems there is an undercurrent of understanding that sexist behaviour is the norm on online gaming services. Anyone who has played an MMO for a length of time will attest to this. Anyone who has scored a lucky headshot in an FPS online will have borne the brunt of it. That's not to say it is accepted - I've quit guilds and left games or stopped watching streams because of rampant sexist language and behaviour.


However I'd wager I'm in the minority there. That it is accepted (perhaps that is too strong a word, maybe "passive ambivalent agreement" might better describe it) speaks to the attitude of those partaking in it, which in turn dictates the behaviours of those partaking in it.


There are many accepted ways of changing this. Role models, respected industry leaders and the like are perhaps catalysts that need to be unleashed. I've never subscribed to the role model ideal - the idea turns me right off - however it is clear that it can work. If nothing else, the Kardashians show how successful role models can be in selling attitudes and in turn affect changes in buying behaviour (among other things). Every successful sports person wears branding (endorsements); in this way it is advertising 101: successful sports star wears brand A of shoes, the imputation is that brand A shoe is what it is that makes this person successful (attitude), therefore you should buy brand A shoe and share the success also (behaviour).


The more successful advertising campaigns are always more pervasive and subtle than that in order to avoid cognitive dissonance (they might sell a lifestyle - look at alcohol ads or perfume ads), but that is the basic recipe. The dissonance can occur at any stage, people might like the brand A shoes but not the sports person, or they might like the sports person but take issue with a feature of the shoes.


To the point though, FIFA has had a 'Let's kick racism out of Football' campaign for some time, that by and large has been a success. It is advertised in the Football Manager games, many current and former football players star in ads for it and aside from that crusty old bum-crumpet Blatter 
at FIFA's helm, it has been widely endorsed and successful.


Which leads me to wonder, where are the gaming industry leaders speaking out about this? Why aren't Kaz, Ueda, Newell, Kotick, Bleszinski, Miyamoto, Jaffe (and boy he'd be good at it I think), Molyneux (well, there'd be plenty of dissonance there I think, but that's fine) all speaking out about it? Making a clear point that sexist attitudes aren't acceptable? I'm not sure if a 'Press A to remove sexism out of gaming' campaign during loading screens is the way to go, but having industry leaders have clear, unequivocal and most importantly LOUD stance would be a start.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I'm back - there is nothing worse than unrequited absence.


I might even stick around for awhile.

And is it just me, or are there other people out there who don't give a flying fuck for the global economy? And I might mean that both literally (macro economics bores me to tears and just isn't worth knowing or caring about at a mini micro machine level) and ironically (as the leaders of Europe don't seem to care much either).

Video Games - there is nothing worse than official forums.

I'm playing Dark Souls currently, building a STR/FAI character for SL120 PvP with The Grant and Great Swords. Easily the best game this year, by so far other games might as not have existed (much like 2009 with DeS). My back log consists of heavy hitters like GoW3 and Uncharted 3, but I don't care for them, despite my undying love for their prequels. I've almost grown out of gaming it seems, having weened myself off my favourite forums (I'm missing NeoGAF though...). I still visit the odd blog (Kotaku AU, KillScreenDailyGiant Bomb, Critical-Distance and RPS), but after reading 3 or 4 comments in any article  on some of them that mentions a console and a PC at the same time (and sometimes, just mentioning a console is enough) and I'm about ready to throw myself under a bus. And the less said about authors who encourage said attitude the better (Kotaku US is seemingly full of them). All that is to say nothing of the fucking depressing state of official game forums too.

Who the fuck are all these self-entitled, whiny, narrow-minded myopic wankers filling up some corners of the internets? 

On that point, the VGA awards came and went this week, if it wasn't for the GiantBomb guys writing pretty excellent articles about it I wouldn't have even been aware. Sounds like I didn't miss anything. Alex was on the money when he said


This simple sentence and its intrinsic, encapsulated meaning sums up my feeling towards gaming. Its attitude towards gamers (EA's project $10; mint game online codes, DLC, you know, just the usual stuff). These aren't the things the industry or especially gamers need, nor are the inevitable backlash each come with unwarranted, but they might just be what it deserves.

Employ - there is nothing worse than being bored.

There is only so much time I can spend creatively engaging others on ThePunch, or ABC's TheDrum each day, and only so many times I can troll the Daily Telegraph pages (incidentally, getting your argumentative ideas posted to Andrew Bolt's blog is difficult if you are in the least bit coherent, never mind your political or logical leanings). And NTNews doesn't update regularly enough to be more than a 0930 login effort.

I'm wasting 1/3 of the best days of my life away in this piece of shit, sycophantic, insular, unimaginative, unengaging, unappreciative, cunthole. A place where external students are not cared for, but preferential treatment is given to PhD students - "oh won't somebody think of the PhD students!", or the many full fee paying internationals who attend.

For example, look at this passive-aggressive piece of shit email from the middle of this year - Richard Torbay, this is in your jurisdiction and I have a time bomb email waiting to go your way about this very thing:

"Hi Folks, how are we progressing with this issue?

I have a female PhD student sitting up in the paddock (doing experimental observations) adjacent to where this person is camping in their vehicle and I don’t believe this is an acceptable situation.

If XXX* security are unable to move these people on I need to know what the next option is.

This needs to be sorted out today"

The answer wasn't to help the student with their accomodation issues for their mandatory intensive school, but was instead to seek the police to escort them from the campus. Next time you see a TV ad about 'little boxes on the hillside', about all the 'care and effort given to external students' feel free to stick your middle finger in the air at the university in question. Fuck them. Seriously. Full of arseholes.

It's a goddamn mandatory intensive school. The uni is empty with halls galore for people to unroll a swag in and a temporary soup kitchen for any one of the numerous cafes in town to supply some staples to for a fortnight. There are youth hostels and youth halls in town to make arrangements with. But no. That's obviously too hard, too progressive.

Fuck you. You're a prick.

Fixing the problem - there is nothing worse than not knowing.

Typing my locale into jobs.com.au returns a laugable 4 results today, down from a marvellous 33(!!) last month. The place has gone into xmas lockdown.

To hell with whinging anymore on that subject though.




*XXX = the university's acronym.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Tis bloody cold!

This is 2-3mm of ice on top of the dog bucket. It made a good frisbee!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Say hello!

 

Say hello to the newest family member, Toby!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Monday, December 14, 2009