This episode has been a long time in coming, and it's been one of the hardest for us to write.
There's been incident after incident that has made us want to put this out there and at least make a statement
but each time we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re not a topical show.
We aren’t here to capitalize on news or leap into the fray if outrage is all we’ve got.
If we don't have something productive to say
or at least some new light to shed on an issue, it’s better that we wait until we do
Plenty of other people will express the outrage
Plenty of other people will get the word out.
But outrage without direction – just plain anger, no matter how justified - doesn't lead to a solution.
So here we go. But just a heads up in advance, this episode is going to be pretty graphic.
We’re gonna be dealing with the base, crass, and cruel side of our culture
and we won't be pulling any punches or censoring anything.
So, you know. Today we'll be looking at harassment.
This stuff represents the worst in our community.
It is antithetical to everything games are about.
Games grew up as a medium about joy, and yet these people have made it an outlet for misdirected hate.
I've heard people say this is harmless. It's not.
Go back, and if you can stomach it, watch the Cross Assault video again.
Watch that girl's love of the game be crushed out of her.
Watch something that was good in her life be turned into something hurtful.
I've heard it said that this is just 'boys being boys'. That's no excuse.
Raise your kids better if this is what your thirteen year old writes to a woman he's never met.
But it’s really not just young boys wrestling with their sexuality or trying to figure out their place in the world,
the people over at Fat Ugly or Slutty have provided us with hours of audio recordings that have shown us:
these are grown men who should know better.
I've heard people say that it's a part of our culture and games wouldn't be games without it.
That is the argument of cowards and trolls. This behavior is NOT us.
This isn't the expression of the average player.
This is the work of a small but very vocal minority, shouting like children wherever they can to get attention.
But, too often, this discussion devolves into simply how distasteful this behavior is.
We all know it's out there and we all know it's the worst side of our community
but we can't leave off the discussion there. We have to fix this.
We've gotten mail from a lot of you, especially after the cross assault debacle, asking “what you could do”
or talking about how, even though you stood up to bullies online, you felt it wasn't enough.
First off, thanks for standing up. It's a tough, uncomfortable thing to do and it absolutely is the first step to changing this.
Second: you’re right, there is more that can be done.
But it's going to take all of us, consumers AND developers alike, to do it.
We've been thinking through this problem a great deal. It's weighed on us long before Cross Assault,
this is an episode James has been trying to write literally since we began the show.
From the outset, it was clear that the solution to this would have to be something simple and practical
things that could be implemented today.
It will have to be flexible to meet the differing needs of various cultures and communities,
and their effectiveness has to be assured.
The solutions I have here aren't solutions we could have come up with alone.
Grace from Fat Ugly or Slutty, Morgan Romaine from Red 5
Elisa Melendez from the University of Florida and Chris Peters, a professor at Digipen and former Microsoft
Engineer were all instrumental in shaping these ideas.
After discussions with them and many more, here are the conclusions that we've come to:
The first idea is the simplest, but perhaps the most effective solution.
What do most of us do when we hear someone spitting off racist or misogynist remarks when we’re playing?
We hit the mute button.
Well, pretty much everyone who offers integrated voice chat, be it a service like Xbox Live or a specific game
already takes metrics on how often a player is muted.
We can use those metrics to help prevent harassment.
If a player is muted more than, 10% above the norm, simply start them as auto-muted.
This wouldn’t prevent them from talking,
and it wouldn’t prevent anyone who wants to hear them from unmuting them,
but it would take away their megaphone and keep them from easily degrading those around them.
It would also attach a stigma to bad behavior: as soon as you jump into a game
and you see that someone has been auto-muted you have an idea of what to expect from them.
The same system can be applied to messaging in game services.
Each game and service works differently, so adjustments would have to be made to fit each system,
but fundamentally, if 80% of the messages that someone sends out aren't getting a response,
you can limit them to only sending messages to people on their friends list.
They can still send friend requests to whomever they want, but it prevents people from easily sending this kind of crap
to anyone at any time.
Or here’s another possibility: what if some of these communication tools have to be earned
rather than just being immediately given to anyone and everyone who creates an account?
It would prevent people from simply creating a new account in order to continue their deplorable behavior
whenever they find themselves muted or unable to send messages.
If you had to reach a certain gamerscore or achieve a certain ranking in a game before voice chat was enabled,
it would make it much more difficult for people to hide behind throw away identities to send out their hate speech.
Of course, this unfortunately negatively impacts the vast majority of people who are creating an incredible
and positive community simply to limit power of those who aren't, which is something we should avoid if at all possible.
Nonetheless, it IS an option if it proves to be necessary.
Lastly, sometimes peers are the strongest force of all.
For any game that relies on social play, we should incorporate the value of respect directly into the community.
If guilds and clans had a shared, guild-wide reputation rating
so that bad behavior on the part of any individual lessened the efficacy of the clan as a whole,
you would see social pressure create a change in behavior.
Because this sort of despicable bullying hurts everyone’s experience, not just those they attack directly,
but sometimes we need that made clear.
This harassment, discrimination and misogyny has to stop.
It’s not who we are, and I know I don’t want it to be what our medium is known for.
Right now, we’re denying our community the most effective tools for dealing with bullies, the ability to, as a group,
choose to ignore them.
People who do this, the people who spew out torrents of unmitigated hate, don’t want dialog,
and they don’t do it out of ignorance: they want attention.
Somewhere, something has gone so wrong in their lives that they desperately need people to pay attention to them,
they need to feel important and powerful because they lack that in their real lives,
and they have found that they can get that by hurting people in an environment where there are literally
no consequences for them.
Right now, it’s as if we gave the school bully access to the intercom system and told him
that everyone would hear whatever he wanted to say. It’s time we take away that megaphone.
These are simple ideas, things that we can easily do right now with the technology we already have.
Changes as minuscule as auto-muting players who have a history of harassment
radically alters the dynamic of online gaming.
It brings the power back to where it should be: the community as a whole.
We can fix this. We will naturally create a safe environment for everyone to play if given the tools.
So I’d like to ask you all to write to your software companies and see if they are willing to give us those tools,
to implement a muting system (or something like it).
Let’s start with Microsoft. They’re the most visible and the service most often referenced
when harassment in our community comes up. I believe they’ll do it. They’re a big company, so they move slowly,
but they aren’t evil and they’ve got to want this to change too.
Month after month, whenever James goes somewhere to give a talk,
he hears women say that they’ve stopped paying for a gold account because the environment is that hostile.
We can’t let this continue. It’s not good for us as a community and Microsoft has to recognize
it’s not good for them as a business.
So ask them, ask them to give us the tools we need to make the online community
as open and accepting a place as game culture at large. Because this, this isn’t us.
For years we’ve been the culture that took in the people that no one else would. When someone didn’t fit in,
when they didn’t meet society’s standard of cool, the gaming community would embrace them.
That’s how the world should know us, and that’s what we should think of ourselves.
We aren’t this. And in our community you shouldn’t have to hide your voice online.
See ya next week.