It's not a gender thing. George Lucas did receive death threats for Jar Jar, I'm sure.
I've received death threats just doing customer support at a previous job.
There's always going to be crazy douches out there who say crazy douche things. If we start legislating away free speech (and I realize this is a UK site where that's already happened even more than in the US) because of the 0.001% of psychotic douchebags then we're harming ourselves and not really protecting anyone.
Making death threats is already illegal, we don't need any more legislation about it.
the article ? "The situation highlights both more general problems with cyberbullying and the targeting of women via Twitter, both of which are likely to see more strict legal sanctions in the future."
The Polygon article talks about Toulouse, a male former Microsoft employee in charge of XBox Live bans, quitting his job there due to death threats and similar bullying messages.
Microsoft's response sickens me. StepTo: I need security at public events, people are threatening my life because of the role I have at Microsoft. Microsoft: Uh, no. No wonder his former role goes unfilled.
A bit of both. The article mentions that this incident was only one of several that came to light in response to recent fan-bullying and threats, and other incidents cover male game devs.
That being said, the gaming community tends to be a fair bit more vitriolic when women are involved.
One of the reasons why even as a die-hard gamer I disassociate completely from the community that surrounds it. The only community I've found that doesn't make me red with rage is the Kerbal Space Program community.
I tend to shy away from official communities on official forums, and join the Penny Arcade sub-community version of it.
The forum mods there tend to be utterly draconian in what they won't tolerate, and this kind of shit would get you IP-banned basically instantly. The discussion of games is generally a much higher-level thing and the community is relatively self-policed, too.
Comments
If George Lucas had created Jar Jar Binks in 2010, would fans have done the same to him? Is this purely a gender thing?
It's not a gender thing. George Lucas did receive death threats for Jar Jar, I'm sure.
I've received death threats just doing customer support at a previous job.
There's always going to be crazy douches out there who say crazy douche things. If we start legislating away free speech (and I realize this is a UK site where that's already happened even more than in the US) because of the 0.001% of psychotic douchebags then we're harming ourselves and not really protecting anyone.
Making death threats is already illegal, we don't need any more legislation about it.
Who’s talking about legislation?
the article ? "The situation highlights both more general problems with cyberbullying and the targeting of women via Twitter, both of which are likely to see more strict legal sanctions in the future."
The Polygon article talks about Toulouse, a male former Microsoft employee in charge of XBox Live bans, quitting his job there due to death threats and similar bullying messages.
Microsoft's response sickens me. StepTo: I need security at public events, people are threatening my life because of the role I have at Microsoft. Microsoft: Uh, no. No wonder his former role goes unfilled.
I was surprised at that as well. They'll post security for servers, but I guess people are replaceable?
A bit of both. The article mentions that this incident was only one of several that came to light in response to recent fan-bullying and threats, and other incidents cover male game devs.
That being said, the gaming community tends to be a fair bit more vitriolic when women are involved.
One of the reasons why even as a die-hard gamer I disassociate completely from the community that surrounds it. The only community I've found that doesn't make me red with rage is the Kerbal Space Program community.
I tend to shy away from official communities on official forums, and join the Penny Arcade sub-community version of it.
The forum mods there tend to be utterly draconian in what they won't tolerate, and this kind of shit would get you IP-banned basically instantly. The discussion of games is generally a much higher-level thing and the community is relatively self-policed, too.
Death threats are hardly new, Gainax got them when Neon Genesis Evangelion ended abruptly in 1996.
Anno is the master troll of all times