January 31, 2006 4:15 AM PST
Online game warns gay-lesbian guild
- Related Stories
-
Virtual epidemics may hold scientific promise
October 13, 2005 -
Virtual goods, real scams
September 12, 2005 -
Game players say Blizzard invades privacy
August 12, 2005
In recruitment messages she posted on WoW, she wrote that the guild was not "'glbt only,' but we are 'glbt friendly.'"
To WoW publisher Blizzard Entertainment, however, Andrews' message was out of bounds. The Irvine, Calif.-based game publisher said her recruiting was a violation of the game's harassment policy, specifically the section of that policy regarding sexual orientation. Andrews was quickly warned in an e-mail to stop recruiting inside the game and to take all such efforts to forums outside WoW's virtual world. Andrews was also warned that if she didn't stop recruiting for the guild inside WoW, she risked being banned from the game.
News.context
What's new:
A member of a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender virtual gaming guild posted a welcome message on the "World of Warcraft" site saying that the guild was "glbt friendly." She was warned by the site publisher to stop on-site recruiting, or risk being banned from the site.
Bottom line:
The incident has generated debate about the way the site's rules are being enforced by the game's publisher, Blizzard Entertainment, which says it is only trying to protect the guild from harassment by other gamers. The GLBT guild and others in the gaming world dispute that contention.
In essence, Andrews and gay and lesbian rights advocates charge, Blizzard was trying to keep a lid on harassment in its gaming world by blocking players from doing things that could prompt other people to harass them.
"Their (terms of service) statement was clearly crafted to protect the GLBT community," said Ron Meiners, a longtime virtual worlds consultant who has served as a community manager for companies like Ubisoft and There.com. "And I think they wanted to basically protect them in this instance, too. But they seem to have overstepped what was appropriate."
Andrews said she thinks Blizzard, or at least the game master (company employees who control game play and make decisions about low-level controversies) who issued the warning, wasn't being fair. The harassment policy specifically prohibits language that "insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation pertaining to themselves or others." Since Andrews was hardly insulting herself, she couldn't understand how or why the harassment policy was being applied to her.
"I wasn't sure that it was Blizzard that felt this way at first," she said. "I kind of felt like a bad (game manager) took care of the situation poorly. But the more I see Blizzard backing up the decision, the more I believe Blizzard to be handling the situation poorly."
With more than 5.5 million players since it was launched in 2004, WoW is arguably the most successful online fantasy game in America. So how it defines gaming rules and says what people can and cannot do can have a wide-ranging impact in virtual communities.
A Blizzard spokesman said it was only trying to enforce a policy designed to protect all WoW members from being harassed. And in fairness, in a gaming world where many players are young, male and prone to hurling insults, that the company wants to avoid potential problems makes sense.
"We encourage community building among our players with others of similar interests, and we understand that guilds are one of the primary ways to forge these communities," the company said in a statement. "However, topics related to sensitive real-world subjects--such as religious, sexual or political preference, for example--have had a tendency to result in communication between players that often breaks down into harassment."
See more CNET content tagged:
harassment,
Blizzard Entertainment,
recruiting,
community,
virtual worlds
I am a father of two children, ages two and three. So it does not impact me now, but it sets a precedent for toe future. I would never condem two men or two women kissing on the street. I also would never be upset about any innocent form of fondling in public by girl with boy, boy with boy, or girl ith girl. But in any combination of these, if a member of any gender were grouping inappropriately in a playground where my children were playing I would be thouroughly offended.
There is a time and place for everything. Sexuality is a topic which some parents feel is best left for adulthood or late adolesence. If I were a anal retentive parent from Kansas, I would likely be horrified that my child was playing a game that allowed public exposure of sexual preferences, I would be horrified by players with names like "12inchshlong" as well.
Now as a parent, when my son sees two guys kissing (we're in Europe, not anal retentiveland) on the street, I explain to my son if he notices (and 3 year olds notice everything) that some boys like other boys and some girls like other girls. Sometimes they like both. But I would not be happy if my 13 year old child (don't have one yet) were playing a video game that would cause him/her to possibly prematurely question his sexuality. It's not the time or the place.
I mention this because I regularly find myself playing online with kids that age. I have nieces and nephews that age that are in fact still quite innocent. It is not up to the other players to judge when the best time to present the issue of sexual orientation to other peoples children.
When I see that the license agreement of a game clearly states that this is not the place to deal with these issues, I expect other players to respect that and more importantly to enforce it.
Go to a bar, go to a district, go to a chat server that addresses adult issues. Do not use a video game as a place to do this. We're talking about basically the next step up from Mario Bros. Respect other people and respect that the other players may not be of the appropriate age group.
Keep in mind one other thing, even if you're not in agreement with my thoughts on the topic, at least respect that simply by being what is still considered a political and religious issue to many of the unemployed rednecks playing the game, the flame wars will likely be obscene and inappropriate for much of the viewing audience. The response by ignorant players should be enough to make even a truck driver consider ducking and hiding.
The biggest problem the gay and lesbian community faces in gaining acceptance is how people cope with the issue of sexual topics being delt with in a mature and rational way. Many people that their tax dollars are spent on congress discussing sexually related topics such as gay and lesbian marriage. Never mind the fact that it should simply be a question of legality. Many supporters of gay rights simply don't believe that it should be an public issue. Gay and lesbian tolerance shouldn't have to be taught in schools, it fact, it shouldn't have to be taught, it should just be. But it definately should not be paraded all over main street. What occurs in a persons house should stay in their house just like the moron at the office bragging about the fling with 3 chicks the other night should also stay out of the office.
This game is not the appropriate place for these types of issues. If you find another player that you genuinely believe would be interested in your sexuality, have a nice /w discussion with them. You can even go on raids together, but you cross a line when you make it an issue of a public nature.
In the future, try a new guild name like "Rainbows", I know it's cliqued, but everyone that's old enough to know, know's what it means and instead of recruiting publicly, simply warn people asking for a membership to the guild that "Rainbows" refers to something about your lifestyle, if they still don't understand, ask them how old they are. If they're under 16, let them know that the guild typically discusses topics of an adult oriented nature and you do not allow members that are too young since you'd prefer to not risk offending thier parents.
Food for though: It's easy to get around this, by saying that her character is the lesbian. Then Blizzard would have to ban homosexuality in characters, which would certainly cause some players to be less than pleased.
group that touts itself as Hetero?
If they want to keep ignorant adolescent boys from harassing gays, it makes perfect sense to allow guilds that say, in game, that they are specifically for GLBT and GLBT-friendly players only. This way, gay players and their friends can join a guild where they automatically know they will not be judged, insulted or harassed. The contact between homophobes and normal people will be minimized and there will be less chance for harassment.
As for your kids, too bad. Like any other players, the glbt guild should be held to standards of conduct that include no sexually explicit language. So the only thing your precious children would be exposed to is the EXISTENCE of gay players and a gay-friendly guild. Big deal. Gay people exist, and if you are insistant upon keeping your children away from them then DON'T LET THEM PLAY A GAME WHERE THEY COME IN CONTACT WITH ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE. This is essentially a public space where they could be exposed to all kinds of people. If you don't want to allow them to be exposed to a diverse public, keep them off the game, out of chatrooms, away from the television and don't let them out of the house without you.
Blizzard's position is ridiculous.
Also in term of that arguemtns there are some guilds that already have a particular focus such as things as a cat-lovers guild, should they be disbanded becasue I like dogs, and that I might call them losers for liking cats. No! Punish the person doing the harrasement not the people who might be harrased.
extent, I believe that this policy is mostly about business. Any
online community, such as chatrooms, online dating sites, etc,
has to be sensitive to protection of minors. WoW certainly caters
to minors. They have to have a staunch policy in some ways
because if they aren't careful, they will be sued, and sued, and
sued some more if it is found that they didn't do enough to
protect members of their community from harrassment, which is
a pretty subjective thing. Imagine young Billy tellilng his parents
that he just joined a guild of very nice people that call
themselves glbt. In many homes, that would be the last time
Billy played WoW. Blizzard just wants to prevent a political or
religious battle ground. All in all, I think they are just making a
wise business decision in trying to stay out of the sensitive
topics as best they can. In this particular instance, it just seems
to have backfired a bit.
to worry about the possibility of sexuality (any flavor) becoming a
factor. With the hyper-sensitive climate we live in, you just can't
take a chance. There is always somebody waiting to file a law suit.
As an alternative, WoW could have set-up adults only servers.
If Blizzard's response offends you that much you do have another
option: vote with your pocket book. Same as when Walmart comes
to town, you can choose to take your custom elsewhere.
In order to define the base of our woes let us diffuse the situation into the simplest of components. In the generic sense what we have is a fictitious world, fictitious character, real world, real person, and perception. I mention perception here because it is vital to what is at stake in the argument.
If an individual chooses to participate in WoW and their perception of that game is one of complete fiction, then nothing that happens in the game can affect their real life perceptions. Performance artists do this every day they step into a ?role?, and therefore any personal attacks against their character do not affect their real perception of themselves or the real person making the attacks. If however the individual who chooses to participate in WoW perceives that world to be a subset of reality, and not completely fictitious, then what goes on in the game really can affect them personally.
And now we reach the crux of the situation as the lure of WoW is not the game play itself, but the pseudo-reality it offers. A subset of reality that filters out all the things you don?t like, leaving only those you enjoy. Early ancestors to the now extremely popular MMORPG were completely text-based, but offered basically the same functionality, and the lure to those games was exactly the same. It was the virtual community it offered, and the persona you could create through your character. It was a chance to make yourself into something you could not be, to escape into a reality that was more pleasing than your current reality and perceive the ?real world? in a different way than it really is. However, when too much reality begins to creep into your fictitious world, it ruins your perception, and the fantasy is lost. When this happens the ?game? becomes to much like the real world and the lure is gone.
This is the problem, and it always will be with games like this. It will take on an infinite number of forms as we continue to search for a nirvana that doesn?t exist.
I've been in enough MMORPGs to know that you don't have to be gay, bi, straight, black, white or aquamarine to be harassed by other players. The reality is that some people out there just ENJOY making other people feel bad about themselves. I'm no psychologist, but in my experience, such behavior comes about when people want to draw attention away from their own percieved flaws. My point is: Ending recruitment for ANY type of group is not going to protect them from harassment.
Each player does represent an instance of real life intruding into fantasy land, so in a very real sense, WOW society cannot refrain from being a mirror to the real world. Thus, issues about whether you like cats and am a gay republican will ievitably pop up in the game. However, the question boils down to whether Blizzard has an obligation to uphold the mirror of reality that it's players bring into the game.
I believe that every governing body is obligated to uphold the society that created it. Blizzard, however, is a governing body that has created a ficticious society to which you have been invited to join. Blizzards beliefs parallel the players beliefs only to the extent that both want the player to have fun and that the code be designed to facilitate that fun. They are not obligated to uphold the players sense of good will stemming from beliefs that have nothing to do with this game.
MMO's are not automatically a democracy, they are all first and foremost an autocracy designed to facilitate fun. If Blizzard believes some issue will detract from that fun, they are fully in their right to excise that issue from the game.
To try to say that forcing people to shut up and hide is somehow protecting them from harassment is comparable to saying black people during the era of "Mississipi Burning" should have stayed home and not voted in order to avoid being beaten up. That's hateful and ignorant, and it practically makes me weep.
Besides which, clearly she didn't break the rules specifically with reference to the word "insulting". To claim she did is incorrect.
By the way who in their right mind actually says who they really are in online games. Only RL friends know the truth (and even that is not complete). Play on these games to have fun not to find other like minded to have sexual conversations. Recruiting and stating that you are friendly for a sexual orientation is not the way to go at all and blizzard is 100 percent right with telling her not to do it in game. If you want to find a boyfriend/girlfriend don't do it in WoW. I also think its absurd people get married in these games, makes me laugh that they put this much of their life into a game, and yes I am addicted to WoW myself.
Regarding content in game that is sexually explicit, let me ask you which MMO does not have it? I believe in standing up for your opinions and such, but you agreed to let blizzard be your GODs in this game and you should follow what they do otherwise I see more nerfs on the way since too many whine about things they don't really understand. WoW is blizzard territory and as far as I am concerned once you enter that realm they are my master and such and yes a gm has come after me before and no they are not friendly, but they can't afford to be with all us punks out there. Blizzard will make mistakes, but they can't be perfect. Realize that and play the game to have fun with their rules. Don't say you have been treated unfairly unless you really have.
If you want a glbt friendly MMO create one and run it your way no one is stopping you yet.
They're not telling one certain group to shut up. They're telling the people in their TEEN rated game they don't want them talking about sexual orientation.
Don't Ask Don't Tell.
It's a policy to PROTECT the GLBT segment of the population, not to oppress them.
I should be able to play online without having sexual orientation showing up any place anywhere in the gaming world. Just play! No need to promote or encourage an agenda online.
Another attempt to try and gain public acceptance for a private behavior.
- After reading all of this...
-
by Hobo453567
January 31, 2006 2:15 PM PST
- I feel like something has been missed. No one seems to care that the people supporting the GLBT's side seem to think that all hetero males are bigots. I am offended by that because I am a hetero male and I don't have a problem with anyone unless they aren't open-minded or are rude.
-
Reply to this comment
View
reply
-
-
See all 174 Comments >>The guild I was in when I was playing WoW didn't discriminate or at least tried not to. If someone did or was rude to someone in or outside of the guild they would get booted. There are good people out there, and amazingly enough this was my very first guild. Now they are one of the largest and most accomplished guilds in all of WoW.
I understand why people think there is a need for a GLBT guild but shouldn't we all simply be looking for good, nice people to play with reguardless of anything else.
I am just sick and tired of being thrown in the same group as all the jerks in the world simply because I am a heterosexual male.
Then again, I am a hetero male so what do I know. Right?