“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…)

Although I knew I would want to revisit Lisa’s story again, I didn’t think it would be this soon. I’ve been keeping up with the comments on her blog, however, and I noticed that one of her classmates commented. I responded in thread, but I think that some of the points he brought up deserve more thought and analysis.

The person, calling themselves “Guildhall Student”, made the following argument:

It just takes a love, commitment, and talent to be in this industry. Its much like Music or Acting, honestly. You have to do lots of hard work to be discovered and only the best talent will make it and get the good jobs.

I first just want to take some time to talk about Guildhall Student’s comparison with the music and acting industries. I find it to be ironic that he mentions acting, with the recent debacle where it was reported that Jeff Robinov, the president of Warner Bros, said, “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead”. While this allegation is “untrue” according to the studio (link roundup), it is an accurate reflection of what is taught in film school according to one student. Acting is no more free from discriminatory practices than game design is, nor the music industry for that matter.

Below I will look at how privilege enters into the equation when deciding on, and attending, gamer college. Although Guildhall Student specifically addresses age, I’ve decided to leave it out of this post because I don’t have the time to do the research to back up my argument. Instead I will focus on family and financial matters, and how the status quo can privilege young single men and end up discouraging diversity. (more…)