It’s clear there’s a problem. If they had made a statement clarifying things, and emphasing that GNC folks were welcomed, then they wouldn’t have had much of a shitstorm, and would have been forgiven quickly.
Now, do I believe that the TTS folks are like Chick-Fil-A or JKR? Probably not, my guess is this is techbro blindness. However, the days of being able to use techbro blindness as an excuse for accidentally letting things like happen are over. Too much time has passed, and particularly among younger folks, the rights of folks to be gender non-conforming (GNC) is pretty much a settled issue. (It’s a wedge issue for older- aka my age and above voters)
My own personal belief is techbro blindness is something that needs to be dunked on until corrected, but that once it is corrected, generally they deserve a chance to prove they have learned from it. There’s a gap between saying a behavior is intolerable and a person is intolerable. The latter is to be reserved for those who are truly spreading and encouraging hate.
Possibly, sure. The problem is that all the other tactics make the people who were subject to discrimination all those years continue to pay the price for changing the minds of bigots. It’s the same argument that happened during the Civil Rights movement of the fifties and sixties, between those who thought Blacks should avoid confrontation and provocation in order to smooth the way for changing white attitudes, and those who were tired of doing all the heavy lifting and felt it was time for the shoe to be on the other foot.
There has never been a clear determination of which approach “works” best, either.
When you’re starting out, the harder approach doesn’t work well.
When you have enough popular support to inflict pain, then you can start using the harder approach. Trans rights has reached that point. It has flipped elections and caused painful economic boycotts already- just ask North Carolina. Hell, ask Texas, who actually tried to do a similar law to HB2 back in 2019, but the threat of a NC-style punishment/boycott made enough Republicans wary.
Saying trans rights is a settled issue in America is of course laughable, since they’re currently the cudgel for right-wing identity politics. Among Millenials and especially zoomers, it’s a settled issue.
There’s a place and time for both approaches.
I wont lie and claim that I’m not worried that younger leftists will eventually end up doing the radicalization loops Trumpies do. I am worried about it, but I’m a lot more worried about the folks who do want to kill me, than leftists who at most would call me sus and hiss at me.
Still, we’re not talking about Activision or Riot Games here, with hordes of polished community managers. This is Berserk Games, a teensy little company with one Unity product to their names. Should they be more educated on gender politics if they’re going to allow an IRC channel in their game? I guess so. Nevertheless, it feels a little like punching down to have the internet hordes sicced on…what? Do they even have employees? I’d be surprised if it’s more than 3 or 4. TTS can’t possibly be that renumerative.
Naturally, everyone now has staked out a side, so they’re going to go to the mattresses since the potatoes are so small. Berserk, not having the resources of, say, Activision, will likely either shutter or shut down communications altogether. No-one will be better off, but the “techbros” will have been dunked on, and that’s a reward in itself I suppose.
Biased actions are not just the domain of megacorps. (making clear I don’t think Berserk games are JKR-esque transphobes, but the action was bad)
Think of the poor mom and pop (who are already millionaires) is not much of an excuse. TTS sold a lot on Steam (2-5 million folks have this according to Steamspy), so prob $10mil in revenue at a minimum.
It’s laughable to think this is punching down here, and make me believe that you’re ok with this happening.
All that is being askies for here is for the situation to be corrected, and to make sure it’s inclusive.
Not crazy demands.
OK with what? I’m definitely not OK with trans hatred, slurs, misgendering, etc. But I think everything about this particular situation feels like much ado about very little. Berserk had an automoderation bot that triggered on use of the word “gay” because it’s trying to be sensitive to the notion that gay shouldn’t be used as a slur the way it continues to be in many online gaming communities. Someone was automatically temp banned for saying “I’m gay.” Moderators said “We have those temp bans set up for a good reason. Don’t talk about sexuality in global chat.” Not sure why that wasn’t the end of the issue. Maybe continue with “But you don’t ban ‘cis’.” To which the moderators said “You’re right, we’ll add that to the list.” And now accusations of transphobia are flying, major board gaming personalities are withdrawing support, etc. Could Berserk have handled it better? Sure, the response was clumsy–the word fetish was a big mistake–and maybe they should have been more apologetic. But yeah maybe I’m just too old, but I don’t really see anything worth a big kerfuffle.
Yeah, I mostly agree. No, small is not a defense, but in practical terms the gap between what it takes to set up an online community, and the resources needed to manage that community the way it probably should be managed is pretty huge. And we can’t expect, nor do we want, small companies to not have community spaces. So some case by case balance is necessary. The messaging from the company shown above seems to indicate a reasonable outcome in this case.
I think it might be. Quite possible we’re not psychologically conditioned to have conversations on such a large scale. We didn’t evolve a social capacity to facilitate it.
Certainly true from an evolutionary point of view. But when you have the tools to do something, it’s damn hard to stop people from doing it. That difficulty scales up exponentially the easier it is to do the thing. Nukes? Relatively impossible for average individuals, difficult even for governments, and usage is universally condemned. Talking in mass forums? Easily done, few consequences, no one really cares on a global scale. The horse has left the barn. Folks are going to talk this way whether you want them to or not.
I think you should look at it from the perspective of: does this feature add anything to TTS?
My experience with TTS was that I was trying to get a group of 5 together to play boardgames over TTS. None of them had used TTS before, and some of them were wary/skeptical of it. My task was not made easier by the fact that, every time we logged into TTS, the first thing we saw was a constant stream of nazi slogans and homophobic slurs in the global chat. That’s the first impression that people get of TTS. This “feature” should have been dropped years ago.
