Polygon - No skin thick enough- The daily harassment of women in the game industry.
The problem with sharing these stories in broad terms is that people think men and women receive the same harassment online. They do not. I’m not writing this piece to evoke your sympathy. I’m writing to share with you what prominent, successful women in the industry experience, in their own words.Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Game Names Are Almost Universally Terrible.
Seriously it’s not that hard why are you all so bad at this aauuugh.
Burrito of Peace wrote on Jul 23, 2014, 21:16:
I guess I'm just too old and have been around the block too many times to give a damn about this "issue".
Someone once said to me that "Humans never solve any problem until it becomes an absolute crisis from which they cannot escape." That's proved true on every major social, financial, industrial, national and global problem I've seen in my life and those I've read of historically. Unless and until it directly impacts a significant amount of a total population, no effort will be made to rectify it. Specifically on this issue, I'd be generally surprised if it effected any more than 3% of the population globally and 15% of the population nationally within the US. I'm sure the national percentage will skew up or down dependent on the total volume of population within any other country.
I worked in the MMO industry for a very long time, since its birth really. I used to have a joke within the office that was adopted broadly because it was universally true about online service users. That joke was "It's not a good day on the internet until my race, sexuality, gender, and alleged promiscuity have been called in to question." Quite frankly, it was laughable to see complete strangers get worked up in to a frothing rage over things that were undeniably trivial and it was hilarious to read the creativity they'd use to try and insult me based upon the criteria mentioned above.
Looking at the article, the amount of bias is extremely evident and that bias is intentionally preserved by the disabling of comments. Partly, I am sure, to prevent those whom would call bullshit on it and refute it. I grant, however, that it is also partially to prevent the trolls from flaming for kicks.
In my time within the game industry, I worked with a lot of women. Just like their male counterparts; some were brilliant, some did their job and went home and some were horrible and didn't last long. There was zero harassment from within as it flatout wasn't tolerated. Before going in to content creation, I started on the support side as most hopefuls tend to do. In total, I would estimate that we had roughly fifty women between account, technical, and game support. Yes, undeniably, there were cretins who would harass our female employees because of their gender. Those cretins, however, made up about 1% of the total customer base. One percent. 99% of the customer base did not attack them based on their gender. The alleged "widespread harassment" as claimed by the article did not materialize within the five companies or from its customers I worked for over more than twenty years. I also understand this is anecdotal and the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
I firmly believe that this is a case of "the lady doth protest too much".