“Although preventing harassment is an admirable goal, a requirement that LGBT people remain invisible and silent is not an acceptable means of reaching that goal.”

- Lambda Legal¹

It wasn’t so long ago that games, especially console games, were primarily offline forms of entertainment. Over the years, however, that has changed and these days online communities — from MMOs to official chat services offered by gaming companies — are a booming industry. With the change in the way players interact has come a need for game companies to define what is, and is not, acceptable behavior. While all companies that deal with online communities will have various policies in place to help them police their players, the truth is that most of these policies do little to curb the harassment that many players face. In addition to the usual problems with harassment, there have been a few notable cases where the policy has reinforced discrimination against an already discriminated-against group.

In this post I will be examining two of the most well-known cases of this problem. The first is a case from 2006 involving Blizzard regarding a woman named Sara Andrews being threatened with expulsion from WoW for advertising her gay-friendly guild; the second is a recent and ongoing case involving Microsoft regarding the suspension of an Xbox Live account of a woman known as Teresa because she identified herself as a lesbian in her profile². Both these incidents involved gay women — who, I would like to point out, are parts of groups targeted for harassment not only because of their sexual orientation but their gender identification as well — and both of them involved policy wording that appeared to be equal opportunity but in reality only negatively impacts non-heterosexuals. (more…)

Melissa Batten was a Software Development Engineer for the XBox team. Before that she was a Harvard-educated lawyer who worked as a public defender, handling domestic violence cases, in North Carolina. She was also a victim of domestic violence (DV). Her abusive husband killed her a few weeks ago in a murder-suicide after she had moved out and taken out a restraining order on him.

Domestic violence is a pervasive, deadly problem that affects us all. This incident is not an isolated act, nor can it be viewed in a vacuum. We lost one of our own. But there is more to take from this tragedy than it simply being a woman in the industry who died. Batten’s murder wasn’t an outside incident; it was part of a greater pattern of violence against women. It was enabled by a culture of misogyny that all too often trivializes domestic violence and puts obstacles in the way of the victim who tries to protect herself. Even in this case, where Batten did everything she could to get out of her situation and stay safe, her abuser had no problem shooting her outside of her workplace.

As gamers and game industry professionals, it’s our responsibility to take a deep look at ourselves, and our industry, and think about the ways that we’ve enabled a culture where violence against women is not taken seriously. Many gamers think that greater societal problems such as domestic violence and violence against women has nothing to do with their beloved hobby, but they are wrong. For one, games like the GTA series rely on sexualized violence and otherwise reflect sexist dynamics in order to add to their realism. Tying it into an example closer to real life, consider the harassment of Jade Raymond. The violence may have been verbal rather than physical, but it was rooted in the same sense of ownership of women that was the root cause of Batten’s husband killing her before he killed himself.

One way that we can honor Batten’s memory is to get educated on issues such as DV and violence against women and stop denying that they have nothing to do with us and our hobbies/careers.

More on Melissa Batten

• Husband’s rage not contained by piece of paper
• Xbox Developer Killed In Murder-Suicide
• Domestic violence claims XBox Developer

Domestic violence resources

• The Domestic Violence Handbook
• What is Domestic Violence?
• Domestic Violence at SafeCanada.ca
• The Domestic Violence Handbook

X-posted: Official Shrub.com Blog