Ok. Let’s start.
You (and others) read Derior’s messages and thought they were polite.
I (and others) read Derior’s messages and though they were condescending.
Text being what it is, and the large groups on either side, I think we can fairly say that a reasonable person could read it either way.
I’m going to pause for a moment though, and explain why it reads to me as condescending.
Derior is an enthusiast. Not an expert in the field. And yet, in his self-described attempt to have a discussion with an expert, he started by making an argument, rather than asking a question. Had he said something like “Can you talk about branching dialog? What are the issues with that that would keep it from addressing this problem in an MMO?” I think we would not be having this discussion at all. But what he did was exactly what she actually accused him of, being a layman lecturing a professional on their area of expertise.
The question then becomes why? Are we looking at the unfortunately common “enthusiast entitlement” which leads people (sadly especially in areas of mass media) to have an exaggerated opinion of their own expertise? Are we looking at someone who for other reasons (possibly even not at the conscious level) will try to position them-self as a peer or colleague in any discussion, even when they haven’t earned that role and do not have the knowledge to back it up? Or are we looking at misogyny (again, conscious or not, everyone has biases) where we have a male enthusiast who at some level thinks that the combination of gender and hobby implicitly makes him a peer of any female developer?
Honestly, no clue. All of them are actually possible, which is why I think that drawing the final conclusion is not inherently unreasonable.
At the core, he absolutely did what she accused him of. He, who has never made games, was in fact trying to tell someone who did it for a living how they should do their job.
Now, the next question is, is it fair to read a male enthusiast doing that as doing it because of her gender. That is, would he have done it to a male developer? While we cannot say for sure about him, we absolutely can say that this lecturing problem seems to be far more likely to be aimed at female developers than at male developers.
Moreover, communications don’t happen in a vacuum. There are plenty of phrases and patterns in English which have been used so often as micro-aggressions (or even aggression aggessions) or to signal prejuidice to like-minded people that they themselves become problematic.
So, is Derior misogynist? If you made me actually have to pick one way or another, I’d probably go with “entitled with an exaggerated self-opinion of his expertise” rather than misogynistic. I just think that reasonable people could read that pattern the other way.
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Okay lets finish.
You want to dance around the issue but I am not doing the two-step. Here is Derior’s tweet.
Really interesting thread to read! 👌
However, allow me to disagree slightly. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story’s narrative design; (1 of 3)
When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players’ experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3)
But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express their character through branching dialogue options (which also aren’t just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly…)
then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)
Sorry Dave, I do not see it and I do not believe you at all. You are trying to make those messages condescending in order to fit a preconceived agenda. That is as polite as polite can be and your attempts to try to twist into something else is disgraceful. Truly shameful. You freely want to paint Derior as some sort of misogynist in a desperate attempt to prove something that is not evidenced in this conversation. You have absolutely no moral qualms about trying to hang him out to dry despite an entire lack of evidence in order to prove your point. How shitty of a human being are you to try to paint Derior as the villain here? Your own desperate bias is evidenced throughout your post, where you decide that the above polite post is either someone with an entitlement complex or misogynistic. Those are not the only two conclusions and in fact you have to do a lot of twisting to even get to that point.
In short, you chose this hill to die on but you chose the wrong hill.
I could have a lot of fun with your own logic. Your entire post was trying to justify preventing people from having an opinion because they are not some expert (however that is defined which seems to vary from moment to moment). Following your own logic then it logically follows that you have an exaggerated self opinion of your expertise of bigotry when speaking with someone who has dealt with it many times. I am an expert in the field. You are not and thus I should be able to deem that you are not entitled to an opinion and may only ask questions? See how well that fosters communication? Personally, I detest that type of logic that you want to apply because it does nothing but create an echo chamber and tries desperately to create a protected class when one should not exist. Ideas should have no protection beyond the merits they convey and it matters not the status of the presenter or the receiver. Only the merits of the statement itself matter.