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Street Fighter and Sexual Harrassment.

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So I came across this story thanks to Remo: http://www.giantbomb.com/news/when-passions-flare-lines-are-crossed/4006/. Go read it, I'll be here later.

Fucking hell, if this is what the Fighting game community has devolved to then it is no surprise that both StarCraft, Halo, LoL and Dota have far surpassed them as competitive avenues. The unpleasantness which this fiend uses is staggering, particularly for one representing his genre of games. With the recent discussions which have been had on this very forum, regarding jokes discussing a horrific topic, I doubt any of you will support this fool.

I got quite close to the fighting game community a year or so ago, however I left it due to a specific player being unbearable, my practice partner, I laid the blame on his Aspergers (That doesn't clear me of blame, I simply hadn't the time). But was this really the way which others behaved, which he thought was acceptable. While I wasn't at the point of conversing with the community, he was, and still is, but I've mostly lost contact with him. Since then I found SC II and Dota-esques, where I feel more comfortable.

I cannot understand this jerk, he seems to think that SC II bceame popular overnight, it didn't. The faces of the game supported the game, from before release: Day[9], Husky, DJWheat, Total Biscuit, etc. Were these guys so derogotory to a subset of people? No, of course not, they were brilliantly knowledgeable, articulate and generally some of the nicest people to experience: I have played with Chill of TeamLiquid.net fame, who is the nicest Albertan (Fuck you Miffy). You don't appeal to a new audience with an attitude like this American.

Even though I am not part of the fighting game community, I am part of the larger E-Sports community, a subject which I hold a great deal of value, be it the Euro, US or Asian players. I'm embarrassed that this guy is even slightly linked to myself. There may be something rotten in the fighting community, which I hope for their sake they can heal, so their sport can grow.

To end I would like you to watch Sean "Day[9]" Plott's 100th daily, I'm not going to add anything regarding it other than it is about one passionate man talking about a subject he loves. http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-100-my-life-of-starcraft-3505715

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(Fuck you Miffy)

Love you too, Pat.

Yeah, when you sent me the link to that article on Steam and I read through it, the stupidity of his statements was flat-out mind boggling. A person defending themselves by saying "it's just a joke" is one (still stupid and wrong, but at least understandable as a stance) thing, but when he's saying things like it is "ethically wrong" to try and get the fighting game community to change the way they are (asking the fighting game community to give up sexism is apparently, to paraphrase another of his statements, like asking basketball players to play with a(n American) football instead of a basketball), I'm pretty sure I had a stroke from confusion and anger. If you want your day ruined, expose yourself to this cretin's views on his community. If he really wants the fighting game community to never branch out from frustrated assholes, he's doing a great job of maintaining his peer group. I take some comfort from the fact that a lot of them are pissed off at him now. Not a lot of comfort though.

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That's staggering. Most unpleasant bits quoted:

Rea: Can I get my Street Fighter without sexual harassment?

Bakhtanians: You can’t. You can’t because they’re one and the same thing. This is a community that’s, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture

You can’t go to the NBA and say “hey, I like basketball, but I don’t want them to play with a basketball, I want them to play with a football.” It just doesn’t...it doesn’t make sense to have that attitude, you know? These things are established for years. That would be like someone from the fighting game community going over to StarCraft and trying to say “hey, StarCraft, you guys are too soft, let’s start making sexual harassment jokes to each other on StarCraft.” That’s not cool, people wouldn’t like that. StarCraft isn’t like that. People would get defensive, and that’s what you’re trying to do the fighting game community, and it’s not right. It’s ethically wrong.
Rea: So, ensuring that we alienate any and all female viewers...that’s the ethical thing to do?

Bakhtanians: Well, you know, there are layers here, if you think about this. There are layers of ethics. There are people who are racist and commit hate crimes, right? And then there are people who are racist but they have tons of friends of all colors and they have deep love for those friends. Do you think those people are one and the same? Absolutely not.

"Layers of ethics" :fart:

He seems to confuse his own asshattery with an integral part of the games. He either knows he's spouting a fallacy shored up by a dodgy analogy, or he's monumentally stupid.

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He's clearly a real class act. I can't say I'm too surprised at this really. There's sexual harassment in all sorts of games. A lot of gamers treat online games as a venue for airing their horrible views and language, competitive and otherwise. In this case it just happens to be even more in our collective faces because it was at a physical event.

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I said my peace on this via Twitter.

So I guess Aris Bakhtanians is some major asshole? Just because a community is plagued with sexual harassment doesn't mean it becomes okay.
Maybe Bakhtanians means to suggest his vaunted fighting game community is the internet equivalent of the south.

If he had simply said, "Sometimes people get worked up and say things they don't really mean," that would've been enough and part understandable but still warranting a lighter-toned "well, you still need to work on your language use."

Instead we have this, which of course has people like me wound up telling him and others to shape up and learn better or get the fuck out (of life). I mean... he's defending this crap, instead of saying it's a persistent problem that needs to be worked at. That tells me plenty about his character. Which is to say, he has none.

As someone on another forum said in reply to this, "and people wonder why video game players get looked at the way they are." Incidentally, it's this kind of behavior (and the belief that there's nothing wrong with it) that has driven me away from playing online games with random individuals - I always stick to communities I'm a part of.

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That worries me about gaming. Not just that it puts people off, but to those that remain, regardless of gender, it's normalised and each problem reinforces the other.

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That worries me about gaming. Not just that it puts people off, but to those that remain, regardless of gender, it's normalised and each problem reinforces the other.

It's normalised if it goes unchallenged. All of us challenging it aren't the important part though - whoever this guy works for or what he's affiliated with in video games, they need to challenge and punish him for it. Anyone like him. If some Starcraft 2 tourney player excessively refers to people as "faggot" in his matches, tournament organizers should ban him from said tournaments.

Unfortunately the way our world is, people only really tend to learn things when you hit their pocket books. Video game tournament players and personalities that embody gross aspects of humanity aren't going to be lectured into being better people. Whatever money or fame they earn off what they do has to be tackled.

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Who are his sponsors? :grin:

I tried to Google search this information, and it was quickly spiraling into the rabbit hole of tourney-tards.

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what the actual fuck.

As well as being a total jerkwad, he also basically hounded Pakozdi into giving up.

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It's normalised if it goes unchallenged. All of us challenging it aren't the important part though - whoever this guy works for or what he's affiliated with in video games, they need to challenge and punish him for it. Anyone like him. If some Starcraft 2 tourney player excessively refers to people as "faggot" in his matches, tournament organizers should ban him from said tournaments.

StarCraft, particularly with the scene originating in South Korea, has an incredibly polite culture. Sure there is trash talk, take the recent Asus RoG tournament final between Stephano and Polt, the latter from Korea; vowing revenge for Puma, a fellow Korean. Though in a way which is beneficial for the sport. After Polt won the tournament, he recognised how phenomenal a player Stephano is.

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His insinuation seems to be that the one thing that ties the fighting game community together is the mutual love of sexual harassment.

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I'm just glad Jared Rea called him out on his outrageous bullshit. He's one of the bigger community names in the east coast fighting game scene, so it might actually have some sort of impact.

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I tried to Google search this information, and it was quickly spiraling into the rabbit hole of tourney-tards.

Yeah, I couldn't find it either. It appears that the marketing manager in charge is Matt Dahlgren though, and his email is listed as:

mattd [at] capcom [dot] com

I sent him this:

Dear Matt,

I recently read about Cross Assault via this GiantBomb article:

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/when-passions-flare-lines-are-crossed/4006/

I'm outraged at Aris Bakhtanians conduct, his general unabashed attitudes backed up by exceptionally stupid reasoning, and Capcom's subsequent non-apology and apparent lack of concern.

Aris' public persona indicates he's an utter numbskull and that approaching him would be useless. Your blog ( http://www.capcom-unity.com/mattd/blog ), however, indicates you're literate and somewhat in control of Cross Assault.

Outwardly, it appears that Capcom's "addressing" the matter may simply have been to pay lip service to those who are outraged, while possibly forcing Miranda Pakozdi ‏to delete some tweets. Perhaps she simply felt she had to due to other pressures, but it's clear from the image of them preserved by GiantBomb that she felt unsupported by the organisers.

By Capcom's failure to act on this or acknowledge how wrong and damaging attitudes like Bakhtanians' are, you send a message that this kind of behaviour is acceptable, when it is not. Elsewhere, it is known variously as sexism, bullying and misogyny. There is no context in which it should not be known as those things.

In eight years of organising video games industry conferences and festivals, I've met a lot of talented, clever developers and fans. I've also met a minority of misogynist pricks, and occasionally even female developers who have been forced out of the industry in disgust at studio cultures that encourage them.

You foster and tacitly condone the very worst attitudes in gamers and game developers. You are the reason this industry remains >90% male. By making a courageous public statement and condemning Bakhtanians' conduct, you could have come out of this looking like a hero to me and many of the industry people I know. Instead, Capcom's position appears weak and duplicitous.

Sincerely,

David Hayward

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Thanks. There are too many people committing this shit and not enough people fighting it.

Forwarded the link and email to select press contacts :)

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That worries me about gaming. Not just that it puts people off, but to those that remain, regardless of gender, it's normalised and each problem reinforces the other.

It's like all those horrible stereotypes of the 80s are coming true... and getting worse ;(

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StarCraft, particularly with the scene originating in South Korea, has an incredibly polite culture. Sure there is trash talk, take the recent Asus RoG tournament final between Stephano and Polt, the latter from Korea; vowing revenge for Puma, a fellow Korean. Though in a way which is beneficial for the sport. After Polt won the tournament, he recognised how phenomenal a player Stephano is.

I definitely don't mind competitive trash talk. I hate to draw this parallel, but really, people who play video games in this spotlight should maybe watch some WWE. That's right, professional "it's not fake" wrestling. The trash talk there is perfect for video games to take an example from. It doesn't get really offensive, it's just appropriately lame while also jazzing up the fans. And the concept of a competitor telling another he's going to get revenge for a comrade is awesome in every way. Dramatic, but appropriately so.

Edit - Nach that letter was well put. Let us know if you get a reply, please. :D

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Thanks. There are too many people committing this shit and not enough people fighting it.

Forwarded the link and email to select press contacts :)

Too fucking right.

From the way I have approached gaming I have many female gamer friends, does that affect my hobby at all, fuck no! I have always treated people the same, from whatever their walk of life or genes have given them. If you don't then you are a dick.

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gawd some of the comments in the giantbomb article for this are depressing/enragening.

One guy being a total asshole, it's bad, but let's face it there are total assholes out there, it happens, but that there are literally pages of comments defending him W. T. F.

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Stuff like this makes me want to punch someone in the face. Then again, I'm sure there have been situations when guys have been sexist but I've done nothing about it and not said anything. I don't think I've ever witnessed anything as bad as what was in one of those videos linked in Giant Bomb, but I also don't have many female friends. Recently it's mostly a few co-workers trying to be funny in a "I like boobies" way on a company-wide Skype chat that includes several women.

None of the women have ever responded to that AFAIK. Should I say anything the next time it happens? Sometimes I think I'm taking it too seriously (it's not like it's frequent, maybe happens once a month or so and involves only a couple of guys among tens of people on the chat).

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Erkki: Yes. Speak up and tell them that it's not appropriate.

At the very least, if they dont care about how gross that is on a personal level, they should also be aware that it could open up both the individuals making these statements, and the organization as a whole, to sexual harassment/hostile work environment charges which can be serious (especially in the USA and I bet in the UK as well).

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At the very least, if they dont care about how gross that is on a personal level, they should also be aware that it could open up both the individuals making these statements, and the organization as a whole, to sexual harassment/hostile work environment charges which can be serious (especially in the USA and I bet in the UK as well).

Yeah, I think I should probably say something. In Estonia that lawsuit wouldn't happen though, and here people in general are not aware of these issues at all and are behind the times. There was a person appointed as a gender equality commisioner a couple of years ago and turns out she's not been doing her job very well. There was a case where a woman that was being discriminated against turned to the equality commisioner's office and had to wait months and months for a statement, meanwhile things turned worse as the employer assumed no response from the commisioner meant all was fine according to the law.

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Rea: When I go to SoCal regionals and I see a Phoenix [from Marvel vs. Capcom 3] on main stage getting blown up and there’s some dude in the audience just yelling “Bitch! Bitch!” every time she gets hit and then she killed and goes “Yeah, rape that bitch!” Yeah, that’s totally acceptable! Really? Really? You’re going to tell me that’s acceptable?

Bakhtanians: Look, man. What is unacceptable about that? There’s nothing unacceptable about that. These are people, we’re in America, man, this isn’t North Korea. We can say what we want. People get emotional.

"What is unacceptable about that? There's nothing unacceptable about that."

A person said that. :getmecoat

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