Gaming discussion #2

[Vesper 29,031]

1 hour ago, robsblubot said:

It does bother me when there is obvious and blatant preaching going on

that would be from the incel/RW misogynist haters

Gamergate kicked it all off over 10 years ago

Gamergate (harassment campaign)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)

Gamergate or GamerGate (GG)^[1] was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture.^[2][3][4] It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015.^[1][5][6][7] Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Gamergate began with an August 2014 blog entry called "The Zoe Post" by Quinn's ex-boyfriend, which falsely insinuated that Quinn had received a favorable review because of Quinn's sexual relationship with a games journalist.^[13] The blog post was spread to 4chan, where many users had previously disparaged Quinn's work. This led to a campaign of harassment against Quinn, coordinated through anonymous message boards such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit.^[14][15] The harassment campaign expanded to target Sarkeesian, Wu, and others who defended Quinn, and included doxing, rape threats, and death threats.^[16][17][18]

Gamergate proponents ("Gamergaters") claimed to be promoting ethics in video game journalism and protecting the "gamer" identity in opposition to "political correctness"^{[19][20][21][22]} and the perceived influence of feminism and so-called "social justice warriors" on video game culture.^[3][23] Proponents alleged there was a conspiracy between journalists and video game developers to focus on progressive social issues such as gender equality and sexism.^[24][25][26] Such claims have been widely dismissed as trivial, baseless, or unrelated to actual issues of ethics in gaming and journalism.^[27][28][29] Several commentators in the mass media dismissed the ethics complaints as a deliberate cover for the ongoing harassment of Quinn and other women.^[30][31] Gamergaters frequently denied any such harassment took place, falsely claiming it to be manufactured by the victims.^[32][33]

Gamergate has been described as a culture war over cultural diversification, artistic recognition, feminism in video games, social criticism in video games, and the social identity of gamers.^{[27][34][35][36]} Supporters stated that it was a social movement. However, as a movement Gamergate had no clearly defined goals, coherent message, or official leaders, making it difficult to define.^[37][38][24] Gamergate led figures both inside and outside the gaming industry to focus on methods of addressing online harassment, ways to minimize harm, and prevent similar events.^{[39][40][41][42]} Gamergate has been viewed as contributing to the alt-right and other right-wing movements.^[43][44]

History

Zoë Quinn and Depression Quest

In 2013, Zoë Quinn, an independent game developer, released Depression Quest, a text-focused game designed to convey the experience of depression through a series of fictional scenarios,^[45][19] based in part on Quinn's own experience with the illness.^[46][47] The game received positive reviews in the gaming media and from mental health professionals, but faced backlash online from gamers who disliked its departure from typical game formats emphasizing violence and skill^[20][48][49] and who opposed "political" intrusions into gamer culture.^[48] Quinn was subjected to several months of harassment after its release,^{[16][25][17][50]} including rape and death threats.^[19][20] Quinn documented the harassment they^[a] received and spoke openly to the media about it, which led to more pronounced abuse against them such as the posting of their home address online.^[9] They cancelled future public appearances and ultimately fled their house out of fear for their safety.^{[47][52][53][54]}

 

The controversies and events that would come to be known as Gamergate began in August 2014 as a personal attack on Quinn, incited by a blog post by Quinn's former boyfriend, Eron Gjoni.^[55][46][49] Called "The Zoe Post",^[b] it was a lengthy, detailed account of their relationship and breakup^[57] that included copies of personal chat logs, emails, and text messages.^[50] The blog falsely implied that Quinn received a favorable review of Depression Quest in exchange for a sexual relationship with Nathan Grayson, a reporter for the gaming websites Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun.^[13][58] Gjoni later said that he had "no evidence" of a sexual conflict of interest on Quinn's part.^[59][c] Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began.^[59][60][61] Nonetheless, as reported by The Daily Dot, gamers online used Gjoni's blog to accuse Quinn, without evidence, of trading sex for professional advancement.^[62][17] A link to the blog was posted to 4chan, where many users had previously been highly critical of Depression Quest, which led to renewed attacks on Quinn.^[63]

After Gjoni's blog post, Quinn and their family were subjected to a virulent and often misogynistic harassment campaign.^[18][64][32] Online attackers of Quinn at first used the label "Quinnspiracy",^[60][65][66] later adopting the hashtag "#Gamergate" after it was coined by the actor Adam Baldwin on August 27, 2014,^[d][52] whose nearly 190,000 Twitter followers helped the spread of the hashtag.^[70] Right-wing journalist Milo Yiannopoulos popularized the hashtag on Breitbart News, becoming one of the most prominent voices of Gamergate and the antifeminist movement more broadly.^[52] Harassment of Gamergate targets was coordinated via Internet Relay Chat (IRC), spreading rapidly over imageboards and forums like 4chan and Reddit.^{[71][32][72][73]}

Less than four months after Gamergate began, Quinn's record of threats they had received had grown 1,000-fold.^[69][56] At a conference Quinn said, "I used to go to game events and feel like I was going home ... Now it's just like ... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?".^[74] One anonymous 4chan user threatened to give them "a crippling injury that's never going to fully heal".^[75] Commentators both inside and outside the video game industry condemned the attacks against Quinn.^[17][60] The attacks included doxing (researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual) and hacking of their Tumblr, Dropbox, and Skype accounts; they were again subjected to rape and death threats.^[16][17][18] Quinn again fled their home to stay with friends.^[76][56] Quinn wrote that "the Internet spent the last month spreading my personal information around, sending me threats, hacking anyone suspected of being friends with me, calling my dad and telling him I'm a whore, sending nude photos of me to colleagues, and basically giving me the 'burn the witch' treatment".^[77][60]

^snip

 

Sexism and video games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism_and_video_games

 

Sexism in video gaming is prejudiced behavior or discrimination based on sex or gender as experienced by people who play and create video games, primarily women. This may manifest as sexual harassment or in the way genders are represented in games, such as when characters are presented according to gender-related tropes and stereotypes.

Since the 1980s and 1990s, video game culture has veered from its original perception as a space for just young men. Women make up about 50 percent of all game players as of the 2010s.^[1] However, many video games condone instances of sexism against women through not penalizing users who demonstrate this kind of behavior, or weaving themes of sexism against women into their storylines. The growing presence of women in the gaming sphere, and subsequently publicized incidents of harassment towards women in this field, has pushed industry professionals to pay attention to sexism in video gaming.

Harassment

Form

Harassment can involve sexist insults or comments, death or rape threats, demanding sexual favors in exchange for virtual or real money, or criticism of the presence of women and their interests.^[2] In some cases, female players are also stalked, whether online or offline.^[3]

Women are sometimes marginalized as "intruders", as it is assumed they do not play video games that aren't associated with female players such as the Sims, music video games or casual games. Conversely, insults towards men focus mainly on their alleged lack of manliness for playing "girl games" or disliking violent games.^[4] As a result, women may face offensive behavior at conventions, competitions or in video games stores. It may affect female gamers, journalists or game developers, even when they are invited to talk at a conference or to present a game.^[5][6][7][8] Since the release of the NES, video games advertisements have been accused of strengthening this tendency by targeting only men.^[9][10] In the 1980s, women stopped being represented playing video games in advertisement and scantily clad women started being used on game covers and ads.^[9] Some women saw their non-sexualized female character designs rejected, and others reported sexual harassment in the workplace.^[11][12]

In 2014, the International Game Developers Association conducted a survey that demonstrated some of the lack of professionalism women in the game developing field were met with. Firstly, women reported defiance from their subordinate male colleagues. The study also showed that white males were favored for positions of management and all throughout the hiring process.^[13][14] Female developers from the survey also revealed that they were not taken seriously in the field and instead were met with inappropriate behavior from male colleagues, such as being mislead into attending dates.

Online video games can be host to extreme sexism towards women, with 65% of women reporting an instance of sexual harassment in this setting. In comparison to their male counterparts, women are subject to three times the amount of derogatory or offensive remarks, which can be made anonymously by gamers.^[15]

Video games conferences have been criticised for using sexualised advertising such as 'booth babes', creating a demeaning image of women, and for failing to stop harassment of female attendees. This has led some to adopt or share codes of conduct for managing these issues.^{[16][17][18][19][20]}

One form of harassment involves perpetrators changing their username to include sexist or racially charged language when they leave comments during live-streams, according to gamer Amira Virgil.^[21]

Frequency

Insults are frequent in online gaming. According to Stephen Toulouse (moderator of the online gaming service Xbox Live), between 2007 and 2012 women were the most frequent target of harassment.^[3] However, data from Riot Games lists racism and homophobia as the top problems.^[22] Furthermore, derogatory words for homosexuality are used almost constantly in online gaming.^[23]

In 2012, a study of the Ohio University showed that the same person playing Halo 3 online with a male and a female profile using recorded voice messages received three times more negative comments with the female profile, despite similar game scores. Even welcoming everybody at the beginning of a game could lead to sexist insults against the female profile.^[7][24] A 2015 study of Halo 3 player interactions found that less-skilled male players display a tendency to make frequent, nasty comments to female gamers.^[25] The researchers suggested that the poorly performing males "attempt to disregard a female's performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank."^[26]

In an ethnographic study of Xbox Live, Kishonna Gray wrote that a lot of the racism and sexism experienced in the gaming platform is facilitated by linguistic profiling. Linguistic profiling is comparable to racial profiling or gender profiling, but is based on voice and speech rather than appearance. It is common in gaming spaces that rely on voice communications rather than text.^[27] There are certain linguistic stereotypes that maybe associated with one's voice, making women more vulnerable to discrimination just based on how they sound.

A study from 2006 showed that 83.4% of gamers had seen the words "gay" or "queer" used as derogatory names, and that 52.7% of gay gamers perceived the gaming community as "somewhat hostile" while 14% perceived it as "very hostile".^[28]

According to Lucy Waterlow, there appears to be a deep history of sexual harassment in the video game industry and women who play video games on online forums such as Call of Duty are often told they should "return to the kitchen", along with other slurs. However, the changing demographics that have been seen in the video game community (an increasing proportion of people who play video games are, as it appears, female.^[29]), have led to certain consequences. The largest change in terms of who plays video games has been that of gender proportions. This translates to more women playing video games than ever before, “almost reaching parity” with the number of men that play video games. The most visible and immediate ramifications of that have been the resistance of men and even some women within the industry.^[30]

Critics have stated that there is an increasing pervasiveness of the sexual harassment of women in the video game community. A study conducted by Kate O'Halloran in 2017 found that women receive an almost amplified amount of harassment in the setting of online video games than they do in real life, whereas preferential treatment is given to men by other men. The difference in the treatment of women further diminishes the desire of women to participate in video games, or, as O'Halloran found, to completely conceal their gender identity and allow other players to assume their gender. Liliana Braumberger, a participant in O'Halloran's study, states that this stems from the fact that the men who engage in this form of sexual harassment have the invisibility and anonymity that comes with participating in an online server, and that men have a certain sense of entitlement that leads to the invisibility of women. She feels that this discrimination and erasure potentially have the same effects on other people who do not identify as men, not necessarily just women.^[31]

The #MeToo impact on the video game industry

In October 2017 the #MeToo movement highlighted sexual harassment allegations against several important and high-profile figures from predominately the entertainment industry.^{[32][33][34][35]} In response to a growing number of claims of harassment, several important figures in games media or publishing made public statements outlining their thoughts on how more needed to be done within the industry to do better when dealing with harassment including Jennifer MacLean, Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association, and Kate Edwards, the former director, Joe Smedley of Sony Online Entertainment and Mike Wilson of Devolver Digital.^{[36][37][38][39]} The IGDA meanwhile published a public statement criticising "The prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in our community" and demanding "action from every game developer to ensure the safety and support of all of our colleagues and community members. We all must do a better job of welcoming, and protecting, all game developers so that our community, craft, and industry can thrive."^[40] While some commentators called for action throughout the industry to call out toxic behaviour, Brianna Wu, who had been one of those targeted during the Gamergate controversy, argued from her experience that the video game industry did not have a system in place to support those women that came forward, thus favoring silence on such matters.^[37][38][39]

In January 2018 following a public outcry the Game Developers Conference rescinded a Pioneer Award to Nolan Bushnell after revelations about early Atari meetings being held in hot tubs, amongst other claims.^[41][42][43] While the decision was criticised in some parts, including by some of the leading women at Atari during that period in time, Bushnell himself supported the decision and applauded the "GDC for ensuring that their institution reflects what is right, specifically with regards to how people should be treated in the workplace".^[44]

In a January 2018 an opinion piece in The Guardian, journalist Keza McDonald speculated that the video game industry would have a similar "#MeToo moment", but was not currently ready.^[41] McDonald highlighted a few instances of action being taken but noted that "there has been no mass movement of women coming forward with their stories of workplace harassment", and suggested that the harassment of individuals associated with #1reasonwhy and #Gamergate deterred women from opening themselves "up to further harassment, victim-blaming, and unpleasant professional ramifications".^[41]

In August 2019, following Nathalie Lawhead coming forward with sexual assault accusations against Jeremy Soule, several other women brought additional accusations of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse against members of the industry, including some whose reports had been generally overlooked in the past.^[45][46] A number of industry members established a "Times Up" group to encourage other women to speak up about events in their past. Anita Sarkeesian stated that this may be the expected #MeToo moment for the industry.^[47]

A similar wave of sexual harassment and misconduct accusations occurred in June 2020.^[48] Initial claims were made against one of the popular Destiny 2 players on Twitch by several women on June 19, 2020, accusing this player of inappropriate conduct in both online and offline behavior. This led to at least seventy women involved in the industry to speak out on other Twitch streamers who had engaged in similar inappropriate behavior, including one directed at Omeed Dariani, the CEO of Online Performers Group, a talent agency that represents many Twitch streamers. Dariani apologized for his past behavior and subsequently stepped down. Twitch was also criticized for allowing such behavior to occur, and the service said it would begin to evaluate all reported incidents and work with law enforcement as necessary.^[49] The event led to other accusations of past misconduct to be raised against various members of the video game industry and other closely related markets, including freelance writer Chris Avellone (later retracted),^[50] CEO of Cards Against Humanity Max Temkin (who resigned following the allegations),^[51] Wizards of the Coast artist Noah Bradley (who was terminated following the accusations),^[52] and Ubisoft creative director Ashraf Ismail (who stepped down from his position to deal with his personable matters).^[53] Both Ubisoft and Insomniac Games also addressed additional claims of their employees being accused of sexual harassment and stated they would take these accusations seriously and investigate the matters internally.^[54] Charges were made toward the CEO of Evolution Championship Series (EVO), Joey Cuellar, who was subsequently let go. Multiple publishers that had backed the event had pulled out on this news, and the EVO event, which had already been reworked as an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was subsequently cancelled.^[55]

However, the #MeToo movement has partially made its way to the gaming industry, starting from the audience's demand, and is currently moving its way up.^[56] More and more gamers are looking to expand their gameplay to play protagonists of different identities, allowing them to see the world through somebody else's eyes. Hence, the #MeToo movement is starting to seep into the gaming industry itself.^[56]

^snip

[robsblubot 3,531]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

that would be from the incel/RW misogynist haters

Gamergate kicked it all off over 10 years ago

Gamergate (harassment campaign)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)

Gamergate or GamerGate (GG)^[1] was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture.^[2][3][4] It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015.^[1][5][6][7] Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Gamergate began with an August 2014 blog entry called "The Zoe Post" by Quinn's ex-boyfriend, which falsely insinuated that Quinn had received a favorable review because of Quinn's sexual relationship with a games journalist.^[13] The blog post was spread to 4chan, where many users had previously disparaged Quinn's work. This led to a campaign of harassment against Quinn, coordinated through anonymous message boards such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit.^[14][15] The harassment campaign expanded to target Sarkeesian, Wu, and others who defended Quinn, and included doxing, rape threats, and death threats.^[16][17][18]

Gamergate proponents ("Gamergaters") claimed to be promoting ethics in video game journalism and protecting the "gamer" identity in opposition to "political correctness"^{[19][20][21][22]} and the perceived influence of feminism and so-called "social justice warriors" on video game culture.^[3][23] Proponents alleged there was a conspiracy between journalists and video game developers to focus on progressive social issues such as gender equality and sexism.^[24][25][26] Such claims have been widely dismissed as trivial, baseless, or unrelated to actual issues of ethics in gaming and journalism.^[27][28][29] Several commentators in the mass media dismissed the ethics complaints as a deliberate cover for the ongoing harassment of Quinn and other women.^[30][31] Gamergaters frequently denied any such harassment took place, falsely claiming it to be manufactured by the victims.^[32][33]

Gamergate has been described as a culture war over cultural diversification, artistic recognition, feminism in video games, social criticism in video games, and the social identity of gamers.^{[27][34][35][36]} Supporters stated that it was a social movement. However, as a movement Gamergate had no clearly defined goals, coherent message, or official leaders, making it difficult to define.^[37][38][24] Gamergate led figures both inside and outside the gaming industry to focus on methods of addressing online harassment, ways to minimize harm, and prevent similar events.^{[39][40][41][42]} Gamergate has been viewed as contributing to the alt-right and other right-wing movements.^[43][44]

History

Zoë Quinn and Depression Quest

In 2013, Zoë Quinn, an independent game developer, released Depression Quest, a text-focused game designed to convey the experience of depression through a series of fictional scenarios,^[45][19] based in part on Quinn's own experience with the illness.^[46][47] The game received positive reviews in the gaming media and from mental health professionals, but faced backlash online from gamers who disliked its departure from typical game formats emphasizing violence and skill^[20][48][49] and who opposed "political" intrusions into gamer culture.^[48] Quinn was subjected to several months of harassment after its release,^{[16][25][17][50]} including rape and death threats.^[19][20] Quinn documented the harassment they^[a] received and spoke openly to the media about it, which led to more pronounced abuse against them such as the posting of their home address online.^[9] They cancelled future public appearances and ultimately fled their house out of fear for their safety.^{[47][52][53][54]}

 

The controversies and events that would come to be known as Gamergate began in August 2014 as a personal attack on Quinn, incited by a blog post by Quinn's former boyfriend, Eron Gjoni.^[55][46][49] Called "The Zoe Post",^[b] it was a lengthy, detailed account of their relationship and breakup^[57] that included copies of personal chat logs, emails, and text messages.^[50] The blog falsely implied that Quinn received a favorable review of Depression Quest in exchange for a sexual relationship with Nathan Grayson, a reporter for the gaming websites Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun.^[13][58] Gjoni later said that he had "no evidence" of a sexual conflict of interest on Quinn's part.^[59][c] Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began.^[59][60][61] Nonetheless, as reported by The Daily Dot, gamers online used Gjoni's blog to accuse Quinn, without evidence, of trading sex for professional advancement.^[62][17] A link to the blog was posted to 4chan, where many users had previously been highly critical of Depression Quest, which led to renewed attacks on Quinn.^[63]

After Gjoni's blog post, Quinn and their family were subjected to a virulent and often misogynistic harassment campaign.^[18][64][32] Online attackers of Quinn at first used the label "Quinnspiracy",^[60][65][66] later adopting the hashtag "#Gamergate" after it was coined by the actor Adam Baldwin on August 27, 2014,^[d][52] whose nearly 190,000 Twitter followers helped the spread of the hashtag.^[70] Right-wing journalist Milo Yiannopoulos popularized the hashtag on Breitbart News, becoming one of the most prominent voices of Gamergate and the antifeminist movement more broadly.^[52] Harassment of Gamergate targets was coordinated via Internet Relay Chat (IRC), spreading rapidly over imageboards and forums like 4chan and Reddit.^{[71][32][72][73]}

Less than four months after Gamergate began, Quinn's record of threats they had received had grown 1,000-fold.^[69][56] At a conference Quinn said, "I used to go to game events and feel like I was going home ... Now it's just like ... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?".^[74] One anonymous 4chan user threatened to give them "a crippling injury that's never going to fully heal".^[75] Commentators both inside and outside the video game industry condemned the attacks against Quinn.^[17][60] The attacks included doxing (researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual) and hacking of their Tumblr, Dropbox, and Skype accounts; they were again subjected to rape and death threats.^[16][17][18] Quinn again fled their home to stay with friends.^[76][56] Quinn wrote that "the Internet spent the last month spreading my personal information around, sending me threats, hacking anyone suspected of being friends with me, calling my dad and telling him I'm a whore, sending nude photos of me to colleagues, and basically giving me the 'burn the witch' treatment".^[77][60]

^snip

 

Sexism and video games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism_and_video_games

 

Sexism in video gaming is prejudiced behavior or discrimination based on sex or gender as experienced by people who play and create video games, primarily women. This may manifest as sexual harassment or in the way genders are represented in games, such as when characters are presented according to gender-related tropes and stereotypes.

Since the 1980s and 1990s, video game culture has veered from its original perception as a space for just young men. Women make up about 50 percent of all game players as of the 2010s.^[1] However, many video games condone instances of sexism against women through not penalizing users who demonstrate this kind of behavior, or weaving themes of sexism against women into their storylines. The growing presence of women in the gaming sphere, and subsequently publicized incidents of harassment towards women in this field, has pushed industry professionals to pay attention to sexism in video gaming.

Harassment

Form

Harassment can involve sexist insults or comments, death or rape threats, demanding sexual favors in exchange for virtual or real money, or criticism of the presence of women and their interests.^[2] In some cases, female players are also stalked, whether online or offline.^[3]

Women are sometimes marginalized as "intruders", as it is assumed they do not play video games that aren't associated with female players such as the Sims, music video games or casual games. Conversely, insults towards men focus mainly on their alleged lack of manliness for playing "girl games" or disliking violent games.^[4] As a result, women may face offensive behavior at conventions, competitions or in video games stores. It may affect female gamers, journalists or game developers, even when they are invited to talk at a conference or to present a game.^[5][6][7][8] Since the release of the NES, video games advertisements have been accused of strengthening this tendency by targeting only men.^[9][10] In the 1980s, women stopped being represented playing video games in advertisement and scantily clad women started being used on game covers and ads.^[9] Some women saw their non-sexualized female character designs rejected, and others reported sexual harassment in the workplace.^[11][12]

In 2014, the International Game Developers Association conducted a survey that demonstrated some of the lack of professionalism women in the game developing field were met with. Firstly, women reported defiance from their subordinate male colleagues. The study also showed that white males were favored for positions of management and all throughout the hiring process.^[13][14] Female developers from the survey also revealed that they were not taken seriously in the field and instead were met with inappropriate behavior from male colleagues, such as being mislead into attending dates.

Online video games can be host to extreme sexism towards women, with 65% of women reporting an instance of sexual harassment in this setting. In comparison to their male counterparts, women are subject to three times the amount of derogatory or offensive remarks, which can be made anonymously by gamers.^[15]

Video games conferences have been criticised for using sexualised advertising such as 'booth babes', creating a demeaning image of women, and for failing to stop harassment of female attendees. This has led some to adopt or share codes of conduct for managing these issues.^{[16][17][18][19][20]}

One form of harassment involves perpetrators changing their username to include sexist or racially charged language when they leave comments during live-streams, according to gamer Amira Virgil.^[21]

Frequency

Insults are frequent in online gaming. According to Stephen Toulouse (moderator of the online gaming service Xbox Live), between 2007 and 2012 women were the most frequent target of harassment.^[3] However, data from Riot Games lists racism and homophobia as the top problems.^[22] Furthermore, derogatory words for homosexuality are used almost constantly in online gaming.^[23]

In 2012, a study of the Ohio University showed that the same person playing Halo 3 online with a male and a female profile using recorded voice messages received three times more negative comments with the female profile, despite similar game scores. Even welcoming everybody at the beginning of a game could lead to sexist insults against the female profile.^[7][24] A 2015 study of Halo 3 player interactions found that less-skilled male players display a tendency to make frequent, nasty comments to female gamers.^[25] The researchers suggested that the poorly performing males "attempt to disregard a female's performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank."^[26]

In an ethnographic study of Xbox Live, Kishonna Gray wrote that a lot of the racism and sexism experienced in the gaming platform is facilitated by linguistic profiling. Linguistic profiling is comparable to racial profiling or gender profiling, but is based on voice and speech rather than appearance. It is common in gaming spaces that rely on voice communications rather than text.^[27] There are certain linguistic stereotypes that maybe associated with one's voice, making women more vulnerable to discrimination just based on how they sound.

A study from 2006 showed that 83.4% of gamers had seen the words "gay" or "queer" used as derogatory names, and that 52.7% of gay gamers perceived the gaming community as "somewhat hostile" while 14% perceived it as "very hostile".^[28]

According to Lucy Waterlow, there appears to be a deep history of sexual harassment in the video game industry and women who play video games on online forums such as Call of Duty are often told they should "return to the kitchen", along with other slurs. However, the changing demographics that have been seen in the video game community (an increasing proportion of people who play video games are, as it appears, female.^[29]), have led to certain consequences. The largest change in terms of who plays video games has been that of gender proportions. This translates to more women playing video games than ever before, “almost reaching parity” with the number of men that play video games. The most visible and immediate ramifications of that have been the resistance of men and even some women within the industry.^[30]

Critics have stated that there is an increasing pervasiveness of the sexual harassment of women in the video game community. A study conducted by Kate O'Halloran in 2017 found that women receive an almost amplified amount of harassment in the setting of online video games than they do in real life, whereas preferential treatment is given to men by other men. The difference in the treatment of women further diminishes the desire of women to participate in video games, or, as O'Halloran found, to completely conceal their gender identity and allow other players to assume their gender. Liliana Braumberger, a participant in O'Halloran's study, states that this stems from the fact that the men who engage in this form of sexual harassment have the invisibility and anonymity that comes with participating in an online server, and that men have a certain sense of entitlement that leads to the invisibility of women. She feels that this discrimination and erasure potentially have the same effects on other people who do not identify as men, not necessarily just women.^[31]

The #MeToo impact on the video game industry

In October 2017 the #MeToo movement highlighted sexual harassment allegations against several important and high-profile figures from predominately the entertainment industry.^{[32][33][34][35]} In response to a growing number of claims of harassment, several important figures in games media or publishing made public statements outlining their thoughts on how more needed to be done within the industry to do better when dealing with harassment including Jennifer MacLean, Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association, and Kate Edwards, the former director, Joe Smedley of Sony Online Entertainment and Mike Wilson of Devolver Digital.^{[36][37][38][39]} The IGDA meanwhile published a public statement criticising "The prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in our community" and demanding "action from every game developer to ensure the safety and support of all of our colleagues and community members. We all must do a better job of welcoming, and protecting, all game developers so that our community, craft, and industry can thrive."^[40] While some commentators called for action throughout the industry to call out toxic behaviour, Brianna Wu, who had been one of those targeted during the Gamergate controversy, argued from her experience that the video game industry did not have a system in place to support those women that came forward, thus favoring silence on such matters.^[37][38][39]

In January 2018 following a public outcry the Game Developers Conference rescinded a Pioneer Award to Nolan Bushnell after revelations about early Atari meetings being held in hot tubs, amongst other claims.^[41][42][43] While the decision was criticised in some parts, including by some of the leading women at Atari during that period in time, Bushnell himself supported the decision and applauded the "GDC for ensuring that their institution reflects what is right, specifically with regards to how people should be treated in the workplace".^[44]

In a January 2018 an opinion piece in The Guardian, journalist Keza McDonald speculated that the video game industry would have a similar "#MeToo moment", but was not currently ready.^[41] McDonald highlighted a few instances of action being taken but noted that "there has been no mass movement of women coming forward with their stories of workplace harassment", and suggested that the harassment of individuals associated with #1reasonwhy and #Gamergate deterred women from opening themselves "up to further harassment, victim-blaming, and unpleasant professional ramifications".^[41]

In August 2019, following Nathalie Lawhead coming forward with sexual assault accusations against Jeremy Soule, several other women brought additional accusations of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse against members of the industry, including some whose reports had been generally overlooked in the past.^[45][46] A number of industry members established a "Times Up" group to encourage other women to speak up about events in their past. Anita Sarkeesian stated that this may be the expected #MeToo moment for the industry.^[47]

A similar wave of sexual harassment and misconduct accusations occurred in June 2020.^[48] Initial claims were made against one of the popular Destiny 2 players on Twitch by several women on June 19, 2020, accusing this player of inappropriate conduct in both online and offline behavior. This led to at least seventy women involved in the industry to speak out on other Twitch streamers who had engaged in similar inappropriate behavior, including one directed at Omeed Dariani, the CEO of Online Performers Group, a talent agency that represents many Twitch streamers. Dariani apologized for his past behavior and subsequently stepped down. Twitch was also criticized for allowing such behavior to occur, and the service said it would begin to evaluate all reported incidents and work with law enforcement as necessary.^[49] The event led to other accusations of past misconduct to be raised against various members of the video game industry and other closely related markets, including freelance writer Chris Avellone (later retracted),^[50] CEO of Cards Against Humanity Max Temkin (who resigned following the allegations),^[51] Wizards of the Coast artist Noah Bradley (who was terminated following the accusations),^[52] and Ubisoft creative director Ashraf Ismail (who stepped down from his position to deal with his personable matters).^[53] Both Ubisoft and Insomniac Games also addressed additional claims of their employees being accused of sexual harassment and stated they would take these accusations seriously and investigate the matters internally.^[54] Charges were made toward the CEO of Evolution Championship Series (EVO), Joey Cuellar, who was subsequently let go. Multiple publishers that had backed the event had pulled out on this news, and the EVO event, which had already been reworked as an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was subsequently cancelled.^[55]

However, the #MeToo movement has partially made its way to the gaming industry, starting from the audience's demand, and is currently moving its way up.^[56] More and more gamers are looking to expand their gameplay to play protagonists of different identities, allowing them to see the world through somebody else's eyes. Hence, the #MeToo movement is starting to seep into the gaming industry itself.^[56]

^snip

Nah there is a lot of cringe shit coming from Hollywood; intentions may be good, but they sometimes can negatively affect the final product.

I find it very ironic when anime and video game female characters often have very broad shoulders which is likely the most evident physical characteristic of the male physique. This is absolutely a trend -- cousin is a contract worker for Marvel and confirmed.

One obvious example is on of the cringiest scenes of all time: "Female Avengers Unite Scene" in endgame; that scene united all couples at the movie theater with synchronized eye rolls. 🙂 So many other cases like the above that would take quite some time to list; especially changes in expensive established IPs.

Working in the video game industry is a different discussion as it is more about employment conditions.
The video game industry is notoriously harsh for software engineers. Have quite a few colleagues from the game industry and they say it's quite brutal esp when approaching deadlines.

[Vesper 29,031]

33 minutes ago, robsblubot said:

Nah there is a lot of cringe shit coming from Hollywood; intentions may be good, but they sometimes can negatively affect the final product.

I find it very ironic when anime and video game female characters often have very broad shoulders which is likely the most evident physical characteristic of the male physique. This is absolutely a trend -- cousin is a contract worker for Marvel and confirmed.

One obvious example is on of the cringiest scenes of all time: "Female Avengers Unite Scene" in endgame; that scene united all couples at the movie theater with synchronized eye rolls. 🙂 So many other cases like the above that would take quite some time to list; especially changes in expensive established IPs.

Working in the video game industry is a different discussion as it is more about employment conditions.
The video game industry is notoriously harsh for software engineers. Have quite a few colleagues from the game industry and they say it's quite brutal esp when approaching deadlines.

You do not get to say, to paraphrase, 'no, it doesnt happen' (the raw open women hating and misogyny) when I just gave you dozens of examples of it, nor that it is somehow ok or justified in any way.

Sorry, but I am not going to accept gaslighting and the attempted diminishment of harm.

 

[robsblubot 3,531]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

You do not get to say, to paraphrase, 'no, it doesnt happen' (the raw open women hating and misogyny) when I just gave you dozens of examples of it, nor that it is somehow ok or justified in any way.

Sorry, but I am not going to accept gaslighting and the attempted diminishment of harm.

 

Confused as to where did I say or write that it does not happen. 🤷‍♂️

If it's about the video gaming industry, I merely mentioned that it is a notoriously abusive industry, which only makes it more likely that women would suffer even more in such industries too.

If regarding the "crazy shit coming from Hollywood I stand by what I said--can certainly hold two thoughts in my head at the same time... and the one I was referring to is orthogonal to what you write IMO.

Edited September 28 by robsblubot

[Vesper 29,031]

The Far Right Loses It Over Black Woman In Minecraft Trailer

https://globalextremism.org/post/far-right-loses-over-minecraft/

Warning: This post contains offensive language 

Whenever a new piece of gaming media releases featuring anyone other than white men, the online far right becomes enraged. Last week was no different, when the highly-panned trailer for the Minecraft movie, based on a video game of the same name, was released. While many online criticized the trailer based on animation quality and character design, bigots on fringe and mainstream platforms alike targeted the film for its inclusion of a Black woman, Oscar award-winning actor Danielle Brooks.

Gaming has long been co-opted by the far right to not only spread hateful rhetoric, but to facilitate acts of violence. In August, an 18-year-old in Turkey with neo-Nazi views stabbed five people at a mosque. His manifesto revealed several gaming indicators in his reasoning for committing the terrible act, but he also used gaming language to encourage further acts of violence by others. Gaming references are a long-standing trend by radicalized mass killers, such as the Norwegian terrorist who murdered 77 people in 2011 who told the court that he used World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for “training purposes” to carry out his attacks. Discord, a text, audio, and video messaging platform designed for gamers, was used by the “Unite the Right” participants to organize the Charlottesville riots in 2017, protests that ended in violence when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protestors, killing one and injuring more than a dozen others. The Christchurch, New Zealand shooter, who targeted Muslims, killing 51 people, in 2019, referenced the video games Spyro the Dragon and Fortnite in his manifesto. Severe harassment and incitement to violence have also been regularly associated with several forms of extremism introduced into video games, including white supremacism, neo-Nazism, and misogyny. 

There’s a strong precedent for racism against Black women across the gaming and entertainment industries, especially within the Sci-Fi and fantasy genres. Most recently, lead actor of the Star Wars spin-off The Acolyte, Amandla Stenberg, was subject to “extreme and relentless racist attacks” online, including a targeted review-bombing campaign (i.e., a coordinated effort to lower the rating of a film or show) by racist online trolls. Despite being a critical hit, the show was canceled after one season. 

The same phenomenon exists in gaming. This year, a surge of targeted hateful and violent posts ignited “Gamergate 2.0,” a follow-up to the hateful #GamerGate campaign in the 2010s which included virulent antisemitism, misogyny, racism, and calls for violence against those seeking to improve inclusive and positive representation, particularly of women, in gaming. This led to the creation of a group on Steam, a gaming platform, called “Woke Content Detector,” which maligns any game that, according to the group, includes content that is “pro-LGBTQ+,” “pro-DEI,” “pro-immigration,” “anti-western society,” and “anti-white,” amongst others. Gamergate ideology has infected the mainstream for years, and the latest Minecraft trailer proves its continued influence on online culture.

On Twitter, far-right influencer Elijah Schaffer, who was fired by conservative media outlet The Blaze for reportedly groping a female host and was removed as a speaker from CPAC Australia in 2023 for interviewing Australian neo-Nazi Joel Davis on his podcast, made multiple posts about the Minecraft trailer. He first posted a screenshot of Brooks in the trailer captioned “588,000 dislikes – when will Hollywood learn?,” referencing the high dislike count on the trailer’s YouTube page, and attributing it to the inclusion of a Black woman in the movie. He followed up by saying “consumers don’t like forced diversity” and that businesses need “to rethink their woke agenda.” White nationalist and Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes, whose transnational “Groyper” movement seeks to normalize white supremacist ideas among the broader American right-wing, made a similar post with a screenshot of Brooks simply captioned “Are you fucking kidding me.” A Twitter account called “AF Post,” which claims to supply news “from an America First perspective,” in an attempt to disguise racism as “news,” shared the same screenshot as Fuentes, but captioned “Minecraft movie trailer debuts featuring fat Black woman.” A fan account dedicated to violent misogynist and far-right streamer Sneako shared a clip from his Rumble stream reacting to the trailer. Sneako describes actor Jason Momoa, who appears in the trailer wearing a pink jacket and long hair, as a “tranny,” and Brooks as a “fat Black,” before referencing others in the movie as “real people.” 

Schaffer shares a post on Twitter blaming the Minecraft trailer’s poor reception on the inclusion of Black women (Source: Twitter)

YouTube videos and comment sections didn’t fare much better. In one video describing the trailer as “woke nonsense,” comments disparaged “woke” media, said that the actor Jason Momoa is “going trans,” and described Minecraft as “Just another stinking dumpster fire of woke garbage.” In another video, comments included “DEI is short for Destroy (the) Entertainment Industry” and “This dei contagion is infecting everything from games to shows and movies. Look what’s happening to everything it’s all going to shit.”

 

A collection of YouTube comments describing the Minecraft movie as “DEI” because it includes a Black woman (Source: YouTube)

Aside from the mainstream, 4chan, which is known to be a bastion of hate on the internet for its racism, misogyny, and antisemitism, is rife with hatred towards Brooks. Commenters blamed Jews, described as (((They))), an antisemitic dogwhistle, for “destroy[ing] the core story,” said the movie was “ruin[ed]” by a “BEASTLY N****R,” and called the movie “The Wokening.” Brooks received targeted messages on 4chan, being called a “fat and ugly… n****r,” “an oh lawdy Black woman,” and a “sassy black shaneequa.” 

On Telegram, whose founder and CEO Pavel Duriv is currently under intense scrutiny (and charges) for his platform’s alleged involvement in aiding money laundering, drug trafficking, and child pornography, channels commented on Brooks’ involvement in the movie. A channel called “NazBol Party Club,” NazBol being short for “National Bolshevism,” posted “There is going to be a black woman in the Minecraft movie. Day ruined.” Commenters in the channel’s chat room agreed, insinuating that Hollywood is making people “watch the Minecraft movie with a n****r,” and lamenting the presence of Jack Black in the movie because he was raised Jewish.

On communities.win, a forum dedicated to Donald Trump, commenters described different characters in the Minecraft game: “Notice how Minecraft itself is a big warning to kids. The black netherman who steal your stuff is clearly a negro, the creeper is clearly a muslim suicide bomber, the zombines are braindead liberals, the villagers who rip you off are clearly jews,” before saying these stereotypes wouldn’t be perpetuated in “this garbage movie.” Others called the trailer “re*tarded,” “the final result of DEI,” and “just more woke agenda vomiting illogical nonsense.” 

Throughout 2024, the gaming industry has continued, largely unchecked, to be a primary source for the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories, open bigotry, and calls-to-violence by the far right. Video games like Fortnite have platformed violent political and antisemitic content, Roblox platformed a hate-infested “Election Simulator” for years, and even transnational independent gaming studios, like those belonging to the Identitarian movement in Europe, have been co-opting mainstream trends like “White Boy Summer” to sell games and organize meetups with like-minded extremists. So long as gaming platforms allow extremists to infiltrate their spaces and fail to moderate those who break content rules, we will continue to see the dehumanization of women, particularly women of color, and blatant hateful language, and risk the escalation of online rhetoric into real-world violence.

[Vesper 29,031]

Call of Duty: Pentagon Ops

Inside the weird synergies that launched the videogaming industry—and made the Pentagon fantasies in Call of Duty its stock in trade.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/call-of-duty-pentagon-ops-2/

Ever since Donald Trump established the US Space Force in 2019, it’s been hard to work out just what its mission is, beyond showcasing the Pentagon’s cosmic ambitions. Yet the Space Force has distinguished itself in one key field: competitive video gaming. In 2020, a team of Space Force gamers narrowly defeated a group from the British Royal Air Force in that year’s Call of Duty Endowment (C.O.D.E.) Bowl, the first such tournament pitting military branches from around the world against one another. The Space Force repeated the feat a year later—and it celebrated its victory by launching its trophy into space. In another contest this August, the Space Force team prevailed on a larger stage, when a group of its soldiers stationed in Colorado claimed the CONUS Esports championship belt in a nationwide Call of Duty showdown hosted at the Eglin Air Force Base Gaming Complex.

The nexus between gaming culture and military achievement is a long-standing one. Indeed, the interservice competitions that have propelled the Space Force into the gaming elite were sponsored by a nonprofit organization created by Activision Blizzard, the parent company of Call of Duty, to promote employment initiatives for US veterans returning to civilian life. But the deeper history of gaming and war-making is neither as benign nor as spectacular as these collaborations suggest. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that today’s global gaming colossus is the offspring of the Pentagon; by some measures, the nearly $350 billion gaming industry is one of the Defense Department’s most significant innovations since the end of the Cold War. Soldiers and civilians alike rally to the embattled cause of American militarism every time they take a controller in hand to try out a new first-person-shooter (FPS) franchise.

For ready confirmation of this state-and-gaming synergy, look no further than Black Ops 6, the latest installment in the Call of Duty series, released in late October. Today, the Call of Duty franchise is a fixture in the gaming world—and a massively successful one at that. The original Call of Duty was released more than two decades ago and set in the Second World War. But like the American military might unleashed in that conflict, subsequent games quickly moved on to darker, more morally equivocal battlefronts. Black Ops, a subseries within the Call of Duty universe that debuted in 2010, is emblematic of this shift. The first Black Ops threw gamers into a 1960s Cold War fantasia of grisly campaigns in Cuba, Vietnam, and Russia. The game follows CIA operative Alex Mason as he tries to reclaim his damaged memory and root out a network of communist sleeper agents scheming to unleash chemical weapons on an unsuspecting American public. While Mason is long since dead in Black Ops 6, a clutch of other CIA hands carries on his legacy in the even murkier post–Cold War order of the early ’90s, as sparks fly in the Persian Gulf. Several of them have been accused of treason to the American cause, and the game’s leading man, Frank Woods, is enlisted to unearth a labyrinthine conspiracy brewing within the US security state.

Familiar political leaders populate this wilderness of mirrors: Saddam Hussein, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher—all are involved in the grand plot. A press release from the game’s publisher gives existential currency to the game’s pivot toward more recent military history, telling users that it’s “time to fight the very machine that created” its protagonists. There are also zombie hordes to be extinguished for players who are into that sort of thing. And early promotional campaigns dote on the hyperrealistic gunplay, blood-splattered lens and all, as players knock off a rotating cast of terrorists, rogue-state military chieftains, and turncoat spies.

The game’s mood of geopolitical confusion might appear to be an overly clever plot gimmick—Activision’s PR copy likens it to a “dynamic and intense spy thriller” pitting solitary would-be heroes against an emergent world order where they’re “never sure who to trust, and what is real.” But uncertainty is precisely what keeps players engaged and vigilantly trigger-happy: The only trustworthy broker in Black Ops 6 is, in most cases, a dead one.

Black Ops 6’s suspicion-filled netherworld is a fitting gloss on a generation’s worth of harrowing intrigue on the frontiers of American war-making. With regime-change initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan falling into subcontracted chaos, and the wars in Gaza and Lebanon a human rights horror masquerading as Israeli self-defense, American defense intellectuals might recognize Frank Woods’s disorientation as he launches into a fresh killing spree. In this sense, the Space Force’s Call of Duty champs might well be able to claim their gaming belts as a central advance in their combat training.

All systems go: The victorious Air Force gaming team at the 2022 Armed Forces gaming championship in San Antonio, Texas.(Air Force Photo by Armando Perez)

The “realistic” flourishes that heighten the combat experience in Black Ops 6 took shape under a Pentagon brief, one that predates the game’s early-’90s setting. In fact, when the modern gaming industry was coming online, the Department of Defense already had skin in the game. The concept of simulated warfare, which has inspired game designers and war planners alike, reaches back to Pentagon-led efforts to re-create a battle from the first Gulf War—and, earlier yet, to attempts to rehabilitate the US Armed Forces in the aftermath of their defeat in Vietnam. By creating readily executed models of combat on simulation consoles, US defense officials wanted to identify weak spots in military strategy and counterinsurgency planning, rendering mobilizations leaner and more efficient in the process.

Instead, what they produced was an influential and commercialized version of warfare for warfare’s sake, launched through Pentagon contracts with Silicon Valley’s rising mogul caste. By the time the first FPS gaming franchises debuted in the early ’90s, the basic model of the gaming/soldiering experience had been forged, auguring an interlocking vision of warfare as glorified gaming—and vice versa.

And Call of Duty might be the culmination of the digital marketing world’s efforts to capitalize on real-world military planning. For more than a decade, it’s been the best-selling franchise among the estimated 212 million Americans who play video games regularly. (It had clocked $30 billion in lifetime revenue by 2022.) And the FPS fantasies that make up the game’s storylines are steeped in the gaming industry’s cozy relationship with the national security state. Raven Software, Call of Duty’s primary developer, is an outgrowth of the FPS genre’s inventor, iD Software, which drew heavily on military tech in its designs. Oliver North, the famous Iran-contra conspirator, played an advisory role on Call of Duty: Black Ops II (whose plotline toggles between the 1980s and 2025 as players hunt a fictional Nicaraguan narco-terrorist) and even makes a cameo appearance in the game.

The paranoid medley of fact and fiction that characterizes the Black Ops series underlines an important point about the evolution of modern gaming. The military’s integral role in creating the look and feel of video gaming—along with the Pentagon’s running audition for successor conflicts to the Cold War—has helped engineer the ideological surround of the FPS world. A military worldview has been spreading within the gaming industry for decades, to the extent that gaming competitions become recruitment portals for the US military. Appreciating the depth of the alliance between the Pentagon and the entertainment industry is integral to understanding the conjoined fortunes of America’s permanent war economy and the multibillion-dollar gaming business.

Cosmic triumph: The 2021 Call of Duty trophy won by a Space Force team floats in orbit.

Ties between entertainment and defense predate the Cold War, but that conflict would become their great moment of convergence. Those tense decades of proxy confrontations with the Soviet Union placed a premium on military preparedness, both in civilian life and on the frontiers of superpower conflict. During the 1950s and ’60s, the Department of Defense sunk vast sums into the nascent computer industry to meet the requirements of the nation’s missile and satellite defense systems. A little-noted byproduct of this union was the debut of one of the world’s first video games in 1962: On a computer the size of three refrigerators, paid for with a chunk of Pentagon largesse, MIT students developed a game bearing a title appropriately couched in cosmic imperialism—Spacewar! Helming a flickering, pixelated spacecraft, players navigated a rudimentary starscape, blasting away at a steady barrage of enemy vessels.

But US priorities would become more terrestrial during the 1970s. The American military defeat in Vietnam provoked budget cuts at the Pentagon and soul-searching among our strategists of armed conflict. This inward turn didn’t last long—or rather, it found new expression in a military obsession with a revolving suite of emerging gadgetry. Military planners studied the performance of the Israel Defense Forces’ technology in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and staged war-gaming exercises in huge tracts of the California desert. The ideological mission was clear: conquer the morale-sapping “Vietnam syndrome” and restore American prestige through decisive military advantages and victories.

The Pentagon’s first attempts at simulated warfare were gargantuan affairs. Standing in some instances three stories high, the early combat simulation consoles could cost twice as much as the hardware they modeled. (Advanced flight simulator systems ran a whopping $30 million to $35 million; the individual aircraft itself could be had for about $18 million.) With its balance sheets coming under congressional scrutiny in the mid-’70s, the Pentagon rolled out a new PR offensive via SIMNET, its distributed simulator networking project, to be developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The idea was to produce a more portable and easily updated platform for soldiers to experience virtual combat—the next generation of synthetic, computerized combat training, sold on its frugality as much as its strategic necessity.

In 1980, an Atari game called Battlezone piqued the interest of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, which, chasing low-cost, high-tech solutions, had been trying to figure out how to use arcade-game technology to its advantage. Battlezone’s designers were recruited to develop the Bradley trainer for the Army—a large-scale simulator replicating the controls of its namesake combat vehicle. To DARPA, the Bradley trainer represented a promising, if rudimentary, step toward a fully virtual training environment that individual participants could patch into.

Jack Thorpe, an Air Force colonel, had been on the simulation beat for nearly a decade. He’d proposed a far-reaching 25-year development plan for advanced simulated combat in the fall of 1978, after which DARPA had brought him into the fold. In pioneering the SIMNET initiative, Thorpe tapped into the Pentagon’s post-Vietnam ethos of innovation: The system should augment, not replace, its real-world corollaries, he argued. Rather than try to replicate an entire piece of hardware, it would simulate the experience of using that hardware. Answering the military’s then-chief preoccupations with productivity and efficiency, simulation could thus provide lessons otherwise impossible to come by in peacetime; SIMNET was streamlined to reduce its irksome bulk and steep price tags, leaving only essential knowledge intact. This design philosophy would become the basis of the burgeoning gaming industry.

In 1982, SIMNET’s development gathered serious momentum, and by the end of the decade, it had gone online. Along the way, Pentagon officials effectively built the first “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” (MMORPG): The essential knowledge that Thorpe and his colleagues said that SIMNET would promote was related to group-based, rather than individual, training experience. Users might be wired into physically distant terminals, but they were nonetheless a brigade, interfacing in real time inside the same cramped, tense, albeit digital tank cabin. This experience would, according to Thorpe and his division of military-tech evangelists, translate into military success down the road. And so Thorpe’s vision came to pass, in the simulation-driven corridors of the Pentagon. In trying to forecast the future, Thorpe’s planning division had created it.

From our vantage point, four decades into the computing revolution, SIMNET’s animation—cube-like and clunky by even the humblest standards—doesn’t begin to approach what we would consider “realism” in terms of user experience. And it suffered from what computer engineers call “latency,” the delay between an input and its execution on-screen.

Still, SIMNET marked an important design milestone, charting a course for modern video and war gaming: Right out of the gate, it foreshadowed the vanishing boundary between gaming and war. Reality, or an idea of it, could be collapsed into a compact unit and made fully scalable, replicable, and tweakable for individual users. Speaking to Wired in 1997, Duncan Miller, a project manager at Bolt Beranek & Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the DARPA-approved outfit that was responsible for creating Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet, and that had been contracted to program SIMNET), said that “much of what we think of as ‘out there’ is really internally constructed, coming from models running in our minds.”

This was a rather heady evocation of long-standing debates about how and whether humans apprehend reality, dating back to Plato, but Miller’s theory was entirely in line with the Department of Defense’s efforts to reimagine warfare from the ground up. It’s perhaps also relevant that Miller was a member of the Society of American Magicians; what he was describing was essentially a conjuring trick. For gaming pioneers and their successors, cognition was itself a form of simulation. The only difference, in Miller’s telling, was that what we are all prompted to accept as the world “out there” was now taking crude shape within the Pentagon’s processors.

On mayhem alert: A well-armed protagonist in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.(Courtesy of Activision Blizzard)

In February 1991, during the American ground invasion in the Gulf War, Captain H.R. McMaster (better known today for his brief stint as national security adviser in the Trump administration) led the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment against the Iraqi Republican Guard’s Tawakalna Division. The ensuing action—named “73 Easting” for a line on a map used to track the troops’ advance through the desert—saw the Americans emerge victorious in just 22 minutes, even though their forces were outnumbered and they were besieged by a vicious sandstorm.

Indeed, 73 Easting was remarkable not just for its display of military might; the Pentagon brass also touted the operation as a definitive confirmation of Jack Thorpe’s vision. During preparations for the invasion, 80 percent of the leaders of the US ground forces in Iraq had trained on early SIMNET builds. But more important, by mapping out this real-life battle on a virtual grid a few months later, Pentagon war planners unleashed what would become the key innovation of the military-themed gaming industry: a lifelike experience of combat scaled to individual users.

To help them prepare 73 Easting for its SIMNET debut, military planners demanded heaps of data. That’s why, just a month later, McMaster went back in Iraq to retrace his division’s progression across the same desert battlefield. McMaster’s confrontation with the Republican Guard would become a prototype for a new generation of simulated warfare. At the request of the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Gordon Sullivan, McMaster and nearly every other officer involved in the fighting were convened for interviews. Pentagon officials amassed officers’ diaries and personal tape recordings, and dutifully recorded tracks in the sand left by military vehicles. Tanks carried black boxes during combat that were later used to confirm their exact ground positions. Missiles left fragile wire trails revealing their trajectories and explosive descents. War planners reviewed satellite images and radio transmissions documenting the action. At the Institute for Defense Analyses’ Simulation Center in Alexandria, Virginia, technicians worked for nine months reassembling the digital shards of the first Gulf War.

Events as they had actually happened were etched into electronic perpetuity—but the results enabled military war-gamers to alter the fabric of reality, entertaining infinite what-ifs and counterfactuals. At the 1991 Interservice/Industry Training, System and Education Conference (I/ITSEC)—an annual Pentagon-organized military-tech expo that brings together representatives of the armed services, academia, and industry—Thorpe and his colleagues debuted a videotape chronicle of “The Reconstruction of the Battle of 73 Easting.” According to one officer, this pivotal digital archive signaled “group training at the combat level like we’ve never had before…. We can test future ideas, concepts, tactics, doctrine, and vehicles because we now have a benchmark that’s rooted in ground truth.” As with any good video game, the endless replayability of the virtual version of 73 Easting was pivotal to its success.

The following year, DARPA’s whiz kids spliced together hundreds of pieces of computer hardware at the eleventh hour at I/ITSEC. Preparing to unveil a bigger and better SIMNET before an enraptured crowd of military buyers and tech colleagues, the Pentagon’s vanguard corps of computer geeks snaked network connections throughout the convention center’s auditorium early into the morning. Despite a few hiccups—errant connections and the like—the computer-mediated version of 73 Easting captivated the audience by both replicating real-world combat and gaming out alternate scenarios on the fly. One giddy attendee bragged that it was the “first time where industry and government got together and were able to demonstrate the interoperability of various applications on one medium.” In English, this meant that the world was on the verge of beholding the video-gaming universe as we’ve come to know it. Before long, war games would cut across time and space: The Army initially procured 260 SIMNET-capable simulators and distributed them to 11 military sites, from the Mojave to Bavaria. By 2000, Thorpe speculated, there would likely be thousands more.

If the beginning of the Cold War set the simulation boom in motion, then the conflict’s end forced it to evolve. The threat of a massive “peace dividend”—or what the military more ominously called “drawdown”—meant that Pentagon spending could be reined in from Reagan-era highs. A new war-making mandate took shape as a result. Viewing large-scale, expensive land-based wars as a thing of the past, the military establishment embraced a tech-centric “revolution in military affairs” (RMA). From special operations to precision-guided munitions, clean and laser-like efficiency would now be the watchword for Pentagon outlays.

The panicked talk of a drawdown rapidly subsided. Preparation continually displaced action as the rollout of next-generation weapons and ever-larger training exercises droned on. Case in point: In 1995, the Army introduced a new planning mandate, Force XXI, under the rationale that in future US interventions involving two simultaneous major regional conflicts, “modernizing” would have to be achieved “through product improvement.”

From the nonstop broadcasts of bunker-buster explosives in January 1991 to the “shock and awe” opening salvos of the second Iraq invasion a dozen years later, the new tech directives issuing from the Pentagon were designed to overwhelm America’s pitiably outmatched enemies—all via the push of a button.

The inauguration of RMA pushed the military to reorganize in the manner of a data-driven corporation, even as it was underwritten by massive federal subsidies. As the end of the Cold War lifted the veil of secrecy from military research, the lines separating military contractors from their commercial counterparts all but vanished. By 1998, the Army’s budget for modeling and simulation programs had surpassed $2.25 billion. The historians of science Timothy Lenoir and Henry Lowood note that while this was a fraction of total defense spending, it turbocharged private-sector investment in modeling and simulation technologies, primarily because of the military’s new, looser contracting and procurement protocols. In 2000, Michael Macedonia, the chief scientist at what was then known as the Army Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM), predicted that by “aggressively maneuvering to seize and expand their market share, the entertainment industry’s biggest players are shaping a twenty-first century in which consumer demand for entertainment—not grand science projects or military research—will drive computing innovation.”

Imperial target: Saddam Hussein, looking suitably ominous in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.(Courtesy of Activision Blizzard)

More than anything else, the massively popular 1994 first-person-shooter game Doom II prefigured the new normal in the overlapping war-planning and gaming worlds. The first version was built on shareware, meaning that anyone who wanted to could modify its source code. The Marine Corps adapted the game into its own training platform called Marine Doom, morphing Doom II’s space fantasy into a close-quarters urban combat simulator, with the designs of the battle scenes’ “bad guys” cribbed from G.I. Joe action figures.

Marine Doom didn’t entirely catch on as a training tool; it was more of a proof of concept than anything else, used to gin up enthusiasm for the military’s larger simulation development programs. And as one Marine suggested to Wired, the game would serve as an extracurricular component of “professional military education.” In other words, it drove home the benefits of a symbiotic “military-entertainment complex,” in science-fiction author Bruce Sterling’s formulation.

Military theorists were quick to pick up on the implications. Michael Zyda, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, held a workshop in October 1996 to explore the partnership that was taking shape between the Pentagon and the digital entertainment sector, documented in a report titled “Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense.” Though Zyda lamented that “the flows of technology between the defense and entertainment industries have largely been uncoordinated,” he predicted that would soon change. Representatives from companies like MäK, Spectrum HoloByte, and Silicon Graphics—which were all part of DARPA’s extended universe of public-private collaboration in the increasingly indistinguishable fields of gaming and combat simulation—signed on to Zyda’s plan.

Zyda’s vision of entertainment and military crossovers landed him a $45 million five-year start-up grant from the Army in 1999 to launch the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Beyond the ICT, money splashed around liberally in this brave new digital world, providing an ascendant class of techies with ample opportunities to cash in. Companies like Real3D and Viewpoint DataLabs lacked name recognition in Silicon Valley, but they made up for it in market synergy. The former was a Lockheed spin-off, created after the aerospace giant’s merger with Martin Marietta in 1995. Real3D’s goal was to market graphics technology for civilian use, which led to a profitable partnership with the gaming company Sega. Viewpoint DataLabs, meanwhile, hawked “DataSets”—3D computer renderings that provide the underlying structures for digital animations—at military trade fairs and to film studios for use in splashy war and sci-fi films. (Viewpoint contributed the F-18 fighter jets for the 1998 blockbuster Independence Day.) Putting a bow on the whole endeavor, Zyda acknowledged earlier collaborations with executives from Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Imagineering; for their part, these entertainment chieftains later admitted that “funding from defense agencies such as DARPA had a significant effect on the development of fundamental technologies critical to defense and entertainment.”

For members of the Pentagon brass, this arrangement also satisfied a psychological need. Military techno-fantasies lent war planners a new sense of purpose and broke the grip of anxiety that had set them adrift at the Cold War’s end. A simulation race could supersede the arms race: Why search for an existential enemy when you could render one on-screen? STRICOM’s motto declared that “All But War Is Simulation”—but the ubiquity of both simulated war-gaming and Pentagon-sanctioned FPS dramas soon gave the lie to that claim. Jack Thorpe’s designs succumbed in short order to a potent, endlessly renewable push to make real and simulated battle practically interchangeable.

Reporting for duty: Oliver North discusses the future of war in the “official investigative documentary trailer” for Black Ops II.(Courtesy of Activision Blizzard)

In late 2004, the investigative journalist Gary Webb, writing in the Sacramento News & Review, observed a new phenomenon in online gaming: More than 4 million users were playing an online, PC-based first-person-shooter game produced by the US government. America’s Army had been released two years earlier, for free, on the first Fourth of July after 9/11. “The goal,” according to Zyda, who had a hand in its development, “was to give [players] a synthetic experience of being in the Army.”

The public and media reaction was, according to the Army, “overwhelmingly positive.” A reviewer wrote in Salon that America’s Army might help “create the wartime culture that is so desperately needed now”—a “‘Why We Fight’ for the digital generation.” The Army soon signed a contract with Ubisoft, a French video game publisher, to bring America’s Army to commercial consoles. “We’d like to reach a broader audience,” Col. Casey Wardynski, the military economist who came up with the idea for the game, explained. “Consoles get you there. For every PC gamer, there are four console gamers.” Webb reported that America’s Army was also an aptitude test, collecting data to help the Army figure out what kinds of jobs to give potential recruits. As the Los Angeles Times announced in the wake of the game’s release, “Uncle ‘Sim’ Wants You.” It was a logical, if dystopian, next step.

There’s an oft-repeated line that military FPS games are propaganda, designed to manufacture consent for both specific wars and militarism writ large. Undoubtedly, America’s Army, along with Full Spectrum Warrior—also developed at the ICT as a training and recruitment tool—confirm that this has been true at least some of the time. But these claims also tend to have an air of neo-Luddism or moral panic, glossing over the fact that at a certain point, both entertainment and defense concerns slipped out of the war planners’ brief and further into the black hole that is the market.

Like any speculative technology, simulation has been an extended exercise in the hedging of bets. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, together with the United States’ ensuing Global War on Terror, reinvigorated the nation’s sense of military mission and, for the defense establishment, reaffirmed the RMA’s core lessons, namely that future wars would look less and less familiar. Training—with a heavy emphasis on simulation—could in theory make the black-box scenarios assailing the Pentagon more knowable.

But the benefits of the new digital arms race have been unclear at best. On the one hand, in terms of sheer violence, it’s scarcely made warfare leaner and more efficient, as measured by the grim metric of mass death (at least for non-Americans). The Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that at least 4.5 million people have died directly and indirectly as a result of the post-9/11 wars. On the other hand, the military-industrial complex’s most fervent techno-optimists have made out like bandits. That’s the clear lesson of the newest turn in militarized gaming: Call of Duty is just one successful war game among many, all of which reverently update and repurpose the ideology and iconography of American imperial conquest. Regardless of whether you endorse the version of warfare these games present, you are, on some level, liable to accept it as true: The history can be bunk so long as the players buy into the violence.

At the same time, like the Space Force, the Army now sponsors an esports team out of Fort Knox. In a strange Möbius-strip twist, the Kentucky installation that once hosted SIMNET exercises now livestreams a crop of professional gamers on Twitch. Not to be outdone, the Navy reserves as much as 5 percent of its recruiting budget for similar initiatives, according to The Guardian. And in 2020, fake links on the Army’s esports channel advertised prize giveaways that redirected viewers to recruiting pages. “Esports is just an avenue to start a conversation,” as Maj. Gen. Frank Muth told an esports correspondent, before furnishing an ideal model for such an exchange: “‘What do you do?’ ‘I’m in the Army.’”

Perhaps, as the political scientist James Der Derian has suggested, “Vietnam syndrome” was succeeded by “simulation syndrome.” As the military-entertainment synergies have ossified into a kind of path dependence, gaming engineers and war planners are increasingly overtaxed by the effort to meet the demand for reality-based experiences, continuously pushing the envelope to outpace the oversaturated sensibilities of their user base. Lurking beneath the surface, too, is the fact that if military technologies permeate civilian life, and if civilian technologies serve military purposes, then the militarization of the modern world may run more deeply than we would like to admit. This may not be the brand of revolution that either RMA boosters or the libertarian prophets of controlled digital chaos in the private sector bargained for. But if Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is any indicator, that circuit won’t be broken anytime soon. 

Edited November 1 by Vesper