GLAAD Highlights Anti-Gay Internet Game That Advocates Killing During Recent Panel
July 22, 2009
Last week, Justin Cole, our Director of Digital and Online Media, was in San Francisco preparing for our groundbreaking Panel on Homophobia & Virtual Communities and was made aware by a supporter of an internet game called Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!, in which the goal is to shoot gay men before they can rape you. Recognizing the panel would be a good opportunity to bring some visibility to the rampant homophobia online, sometimes manifesting in games like this, Cole brought up the issue during his moderation of the panel.
The panelists made it clear that their companies would never tolerate games like this, which is user generated content.
The problem in this case is how to address anti-gay defamatory gaming content when it is made by an individual and then goes viral. A simple Google search brings up a staggering number of sites where it is available to play and/or download.
The popular gaming website Kotaku did a write up Monday on the panel which included a mention of Cole raising the issues with the game. The game originated on a French website called Uzinagaz in 2002 and was subsequently yanked and banned in France after an outcry from French LGBT rights groups. The group Gay Armenia has been pressuring a Georgian gaming site, which markets their games to children, to remove it.
GLAAD will be looking into the online game and providing more information soon. To see the discussion that GLAAD initiated on the game, please check back next week for footage of the panel.
Related Posts:5th Annual Pride Celebration To Be Held In The World of Warcraft
June 10, 2009
The world’s largest LGBT online gaming guild officially announced the 5th annual World of Warcraft Pride Celebration, to be held Saturday June 20th at 12pm PDT, via press release Monday.
You can also read the invitation on the guild’s website by clicking here.
As noted in the invitation, this year’s celebration very much mirrors activities to be found in real world pride celebrations, such a craft fair, a fashion show, a dance party and even floats.
Guild founder Benjamin Hardin, who has been interviewed previously by various news outlets for his LGBT organizing in the WOW, had this to say about the guild’s in-game efforts:
“Because the misunderstanding, disrespect, anti-gay slurs and stigma we see in virtual worlds parallels those we find in the real one, we respond online in a similar manner by creating a supportive, accepting, respectful social atmosphere and celebrating our lives with events like our upcoming fifth annual in-game pride celebration.”
Check out last year’s celebration below:
When “Old Republic” Strikes New Media
May 1, 2009
This past Tuesday, a few of GLAAD’s supporters tipped me off to a story over at the site Kotaku. From the Kotaku post, by Luke Plunkett:
BioWare take their Star Wars role-playing seriously. So seriously that the developers are shutting down talk on Old Republic’s message boards about homosexuality, because it’s a term that does “not exist in Star Wars”.
Yes, if you care to trawl around the site, there are a few threads that either began as, or devolved into, discussion of how the game – or the game’s future player base – would handle gay relationships. And those threads are now locked.
According to Plunkett’s post, the community manager over at BioWare, Sean Dahlberg, posted this message on a closed thread:
As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars.
Thread closed.
The story was also reported on prominent LGBT gaming sites like GayGamer.net and LesbianGamers.com.
GLAAD immediately reached out to BioWare on Tuesday to get clarification on the situation. In the email, I wrote:
If this is the case, and BioWare is not allowing people to either talk about gay relationships or to use the words “homosexual,” “lesbian,” or “gay,” we would like you to explain exactly why this is. Also, what are their other restrictions and other words not allowed on the message boards?
I’m looking forward to a prompt response, as many people – both within the gaming word and the lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender community – are beginning to discuss this issue and calling on GLAAD to take action.
While BioWare did not respond to GLAAD on Tuesday, I did receive an email from a Vice President at Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA), the parent company of BioWare, on Wednesday. EA also owns, amongst many others, the popular Sims and Madden NFL series.
In the email from EA, the Vice President responded by stating:
We made a mistake in constructing a filter that was intended to deter hateful language in one of our online communities. The filter was too broad and included the words “gay” and “lesbian.” When this mistake was brought to our attention, we corrected the filter, and apologized to the community with a statement to say that it was never our intention to restrict any specific group in the community.
The email also contained a series of facts about this specific situation and information about EA’s overall policy on comment thread moderation. Important among them was this statement:
The words “gay” and “lesbian” are NOT filtered in communities related to other EA games – however I have initiated a review to ensure this is the case with all EA sites.
Also:
Filtering the words “gay” and “lesbian” was clearly a mistake; but one made with the intention of providing a civil atmosphere for players – certainly including gay and lesbian players.
In closing, the Vice President wrote:
I hope that you and everyone associated with GLAAD understand that this was a mistake based on a sincere effort to filter hateful language off of our web site, and not to discriminate against anyone in the player community.
After receiving the email, I also received a call directly from the Vice President at EA. During the call, EA again expressed regret about the Old Republic message boards situation, we discussed the problem of homophobia in online gaming, and EA extended an offer for GLAAD to come out to California and address their staff.
I was also able to talk with EA about a new initiative that GLAAD’s Digital Media team has launched – GLAAD’s Project on Homophobia in Virtual Communities. I’ll have much more to say about this new initiative in a separate follow up post, but for now I will say that both Microsoft and EA have committed to collaborating on the project.
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The situation with EA and the Old Republic message boards was an unfortunate one, but it highlights the problem at hand – how to fight defamation and homophobia in virtual communities without restrictions and/or moderation that either force LGBT people into virtual closets or ruin the gaming experience for everyone, LGBT people included. Then, there is the problem of how to educate these fast growing virtual communities about the real and negative impacts of homophobia.
There is no doubt these are significant problems, but GLAAD is actively working with a broad range of gamers, new media specialists, and the many companies that own and operate virtual communities to help solve them.
LGBT people, like everyone else, are looking for fun and safe spaces and communities online. The response from Electronic Arts, Inc. and their commitment, along with Microsoft and others, to collaborating with GLAAD on this project is very promising.
I, for one, am hopeful that this focus and commitment may soon lead to a new day and better experience for LGBT people and the many others who are currently bullied, harassed and discriminated against online.
More to follow soon, so be sure to check back often…
Follow GLAAD on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/glaad
CBS News on LOGO Continues Conversation on Homophobia and Online Gaming
March 20, 2009
As you can see from the video below, the conversation surrounding online gaming and homophobia is continuing to be discussed throughout the media:
GLAAD’s Digital & Online Media Program continues to be heavily involved in these conversations. Staff recently spent two days at the Microsoft corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington meeting with XBox Live policy officials and enforcers. We were there in order better understand their current gaming policies, suggest and work towards creating new and better policies, and to talk about the issue of homophobia and defamation on their online gaming platform.
We’ll have more in depth details about our trip and the future of our work in this area over the next few days. For now, you can check out our previous post XBox Live, Homophobia, and Online Gaming for more background on the story and issue.
XBox Live, Homophobia, and Online Gaming Policy
February 26, 2009
A post over at The Consumerist has generated a great deal of buzz in the blogosphere today.
From yesterday’s post:
Teresa says that she was harassed by other players and later suspended from XBOX Live because she identified herself as a lesbian in her profile. When she appealed to Microsoft, she says they told her that other gamers found her sexual orientation “offensive.”
The Consumerist also posted Teresa’s letter to them in which she describes the incident. They followed it with:
We’ve heard of gamers being suspended for identifying themselves as gay in their GamerTag, and even one case of a guy whose name was actually “Richard Gaywood” but his tag was suspended anyway because apparently the word “gay” is so offensive that it doesn’t matter if its actually your name.
As far as we know, Microsoft is unwilling to reconsider this position.
The Seattle, WA, based The Stranger had this to say about the situation:
“The story doesn’t entirely add up-mostly because The Consumerist prefers to hit copy+paste than do any research or fact-checking (no user name? no request from Microsoft for a response? hello libel?), but also because the way Xbox Live works, this user wouldn’t have necessarily broadcast her sexual preference as described. But a user can find him/herself temporarily banned if a boatload of people send complaints through Xbox Live’s reporting system…”
The Stranger also noted that Stephen Toulouse, who handles policy and enforcement for XBox Live, updated his twitter feed with this message:
re: the consumerist story. Expression of any sexual orientation (straight or gay or otherswise) is not allowed in gamertags. However we’ve heard from the user base they want that capability, so I am examining how we can provide it in a way that wont get misused. I can’t say any more at the moment, except to say I’m working right now in finding a way to safely express relationship preference.
Since the beginning of this year, GLAAD has been in active conversations with Microsoft, specifically with Stephen Tolouse, about XBox Live and how their policies affect LGBT people. The conversations actually began as a result of work GLAAD did around the launch of Sony’s beta for it’s new online virtual world, Playstation Home.
At the end of 2008, when Sony launched the beta for Playstation Home, we fielded concerns from GLAAD supporters that the system was not LGBT friendly. It was being reported to us that when people used the chat feature and would type in certain words like “gay” or “lesbian”, they would come up as asterisks like “***” or “*******.” Typing and sending “I am gay” would actually send “I am ***.” Also, people found they were banned from using a similar set of words to name “clubs” in the virtual world.
We reached out to Sony and after a series of productive conversations over a few days, changes were made to the system that removed some of these restrictions. Unfortunately, some still remain. And GLAAD remains dedicated to working with Sony to address them.
Back to Microsoft – While researching the Sony issue, we came across many different articles and blog posts from May of 2008 talking about Microsoft and the banning of users and the many restrictions that were affecting LGBT gamers. Wanting to see if any progress had been made since May, we reached out to Microsoft and got an almost instant reply from Stephen Toulouse.
After talking with both Sony and Microsoft, GLAAD began to notice a common thread in both of the gaming giant’s policies – they were both put in place to fight and/or prevent defamation. It sounds counterintuitive to some, and to even us at first, but upon further review and discussion, the issue at hand became clearer.
The online world provides unprecedented anonymity for people. They can, and do, say what they want. Unfortunately, in online gaming that has often translated to homophobic, racist, and misogynistic attacks.
Look at some of these staggering numbers from a survey done in 2007:
88% of respondents said they had heard the phrase “that’s so gay” while 84% said they had heard ‘gay’ used in a derogatory fashion. Over 50% said they felt that games portray gay people in a stereotypical way, while 42% believe gays are under-represented in games. 15% said the industry creates a culture where gay employees “feel like they must stay in the closet”. 52% believed that the gaming community is hostile to gay and lesbian gamers. Only 9% said they “never” encounter anti-gay sentiments from online gamers.
Sony, Microsoft, and many others have been trying to address this by putting policies in place to prevent subscribers from using the online shield of anonymity to harass, verbally assault, and generally defame others. Are they the best policies? No. Are they working to improve them?
In the case of Stephen and Microsoft – they have been nothing but open, welcoming, and willing to discuss ideas for positive and inclusive changes during these conversations. Microsoft has invited GLAAD out to its headquarters in Redmond, WA, for multi-day meetings with developers, executives, and policy enforcers in the upcoming weeks.
As for the rampant homophobia in the online gaming community, GLAAD is also working to address that. In addition to meeting with gaming companies, we’re planning to host a panel discussion early this summer in Silicon Valley. We’ll be discussing the issue and getting feedback from both the LGBT and gaming community about how to fight the defamation and educate users about the impact of their words and actions.
We’re truly in a new era. And with new technologies, come new challenges. LGBT people have fought hard for years to come out of real-world closets – we’re not willing to accept virtual ones.
As GLAAD makes progress, we will be engaging the community in a vibrant discussion and work together to find the best solutions to make online gaming safe and enjoying for us all.
