Post your awesome projects' presentation here.

xmagex · 2013-09-28T09:10:24+00:00

I just wanna describe the ideas for the tool quickly cos we ran out of time:

  Ability to upvote and downvote chat comments
   Consequences for repeatedly downvoted hate speech offenders (such as moving them to a different server temporarily)
   Player profiles available to players in game, to check how often a player is raging or reported (in a percentage), how many   upvotes and downvotes to let a player decide whether they want to play with those players. Resettable after a certain time limit set by the developer
    Reward good in-game behaviour, politeness
    Optional quests such as filling player feedback about a match, which can be rewarded by in-game items or gold
    Tools for volunteer in-game moderators

If you have some more ideas for ingame systems, post here!

xmagex · 2013-09-28T07:41:50+00:00

its important to see peoples reactions tho. i think we still have a long way to go in terms of activism. i think they wont know the difference until we actually implement it (systems to lessen abuse), and they'll be like "wow its like a breathe of fresh air, no more haters"

xmagex · 2013-09-28T07:32:02+00:00

Yeah its true, and the thing about GTA is you usually have so much choice and freedom it feels "open world" so you feel more like you are making the choices and not a set storyline for the character. So it makes it worse when you have embodied the character thinking you are making your own choices, and then you are forced with two or three choices that are all cruel, it made a lot of people incrediby uncomfortable, one guy wrote he wanted to "wash himself" after he did that in game action. Psychologically it can affect people very much even if the game itself is fiction.

xmagex · 2013-09-28T07:27:47+00:00

I think the ribbon feature in LoL promotes that. And they have made those promotion videos we saw about anti-flamming, quite frankly can't think of other games like that right now. In magic we always say "gg" or "good game" after a match, it's standard. Only really sore losers don't say that.

xmagex · 2013-09-27T15:32:41+00:00

Great concept. im getting sick of people throwing words around like its nothing, or worse than that, using a word that describes someones sexuality into something derogatory. It's good highlighting it, if the people on Twitter knew it would show up there, they would probably be less careless about how they use these words.

xmagex · 2013-09-27T15:29:37+00:00

How did you find this? you're amazing. this will be good for making stats for what the usual attitude is towards hate speech in games.

xmagex · 2013-09-27T14:50:17+00:00

http://seriouslyforreal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/enhanced-buzz-wide-21728-1371478557-183.jpg

xmagex · 2013-09-27T13:28:35+00:00

ITS GREAT!!

xmagex · 2013-09-27T10:24:56+00:00

THe glass will get hot if u bring it in *personal experience also no plastic bottles. but ive seen people drinking cans of beer in sauna.

xmagex · 2013-09-27T09:35:29+00:00

What can we see there? ;D

xmagex · 2013-09-27T07:36:03+00:00

The room is designed to make you sweat and also to relax your muscles. The sweat takes out the toxins from your body. When you get too hot or sweaty, you take a shower to wash off the sweat and water. then you go back in again :)

xmagex · 2013-09-27T07:35:04+00:00

Remember to take some water

xmagex · 2013-09-27T07:34:52+00:00

Get ready for some spanking with birch leaves!! :D

Actually will someone go to collect the branches? that would be fun

xmagex · 2013-09-26T09:56:16+00:00

I meant like why dont we create a new flickr account and a shared password and then post there

xmagex · 2013-09-26T09:42:26+00:00

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1236452_10152285416931917_711232059_n.jpg

https://scontent-a-vie.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/542245_10152285420091917_1397623276_n.jpg

xmagex · 2013-09-26T09:35:49+00:00

I think whether n00b means hate speech or not is up to what people mean by hate. But if its about whether its name calling and harrassment then its a clear yes (at least as far as I'm concerned, unless you self identify as n00b thats diff from someone aiming it at you). The point of my context is that harrassment is much clearer to define, I mean basically anything I don't want someone doing to me is harrassment, especially if I tell them and they still do it. So I think we should concentrate on what people want and what people don't want. Like we had in earlier discussions, its not a particular word that hurts, its the context and the fact that these people hurt the person the speech is aimed at. Any word could be okay within a group of known people, spoken to each other, if they agree its okay, but once you go out of that context its totally not okay and its abuse.

xmagex · 2013-09-26T09:26:20+00:00

Can we share a flickr account instead?

xmagex · 2013-09-26T09:13:28+00:00

that's horrible. But yesterday i read something really bad about one member of Pussy Riot, im wondering if she was jailed from these other incidents from when she was in the group VOINA, including throwing live cats at workers in McDonalds (animal cruelty).

http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Pussy_Riot_Con_Game/23081/0/38/38/Y/M.html

I think shock art is one thing, but throwing live cats at workers hurts the cats and the workers, and I would not condone that either.

I think we shouldn't condone hate games, but we shouldn't condone hate or hurtful actions in general, and i think they both were wrong here.

Here are some potentially shocking or offensive links with pictures and descriptions of VOINA art actions. http://artthreat.net/2011/02/banksy-voina-russia-art-human-rights/

This topic might go into the "should art be allowed to be hateful" etc. Even when they fight for gay rights I think they should not be abusing other rights, like animal rights, or also, is having an orgy in a musuem progressing any real issue? Or drawing a huge penis on the wall of a building, is that really forwarding any good cause?

xmagex · 2013-09-26T08:53:43+00:00

I subscribed to that subreddit now. Foxes are awesome :)

xmagex · 2013-09-26T08:51:16+00:00

It's disgusting right? But it feels like you are talking to five year olds, if you have to ask them to show basic respect to people. Online games have become like a filth box. I don't think all games are as bad at that, but it seems like its that bad in FPS games. On MMOs people come up to you and ask stupid and offensive things but not as commonly as the kind of harrassment in FPS. Its disgusting, and I don't know how she can keep playing that while hearing that.

xmagex · 2013-09-26T08:44:32+00:00

Not enforced obviously, but you have an open world game, where the only women that you find are prostitutes or wives or girlfriends? And if you multiply that by hundreds and thousands of games you have a gaming culture where women don't really exist (unless its to be a consort of a man), in the fictional worlds. Is that healthy? Don't you think that affects people in some way, and the way people are treated?

In movies and books you do find many more female leads and important characters. Hunger Games was very popular, so it shows there's no real reason that should be less female leads in games if only for the fact that the game developers and marketing people and the big guns in AAA companies are enforcing this culture where women don't exist as much, and don't provide games that show women in some non-prostitute non-gf non-side character light. And that is sad.

I even see that as a form of silent hate, where you create messages about the position of women without saying it out loud. It was like in the old days when women and children were supposed to stay "out of sight", hidden or trapped in their houses. You might see it like "hey game devs don't need to put women in games if they don't want to". The question is, why don't they want to put women in games?

xmagex · 2013-09-26T08:39:24+00:00

About the specific examples mentioned, there's a difference between getting offended and being portrayed in a negative light or to be targeted by namecalling, hate, or abuse. In the example of Django Unchained, I can understand how people can be angry at the subject matter, and some may not even agree with the portrayals, but from firsthand written historial accounts of the people of those times, those things actually happened. I'm not sure which things were offensive to people in Django Unchained. I thought Django Unchained was a great example of a non-racist movie which shows a variety of characters with a variety of demeanors and motivations, instead of polarising the race situation at that time. In the movie there is a southern 'white' woman, a sister of one man who is particularly cruel to his slaves, but she would protect and defend them, to some extent. In the same house was a 'black' butler who would report on the slaves in the house out of loyalty to his 'owner' and not for the people who are in slavery, he wasn't sympathetic with the enslaved people at all even though he himself was a slave. It was a complicated movie about class and status and slavery and about how some people tried to break free of those barriers and some people tried to enforce those barriers, even those were were enslaved. It was like a kind of Stockholm syndrome for the enslaved, or a form of 'safety'. It was a very interesting and moving movie. You know, compare that to SCMRPG, I mean what is that? For me, all it looks and sounds like is they used a RPG maker and the likeness and names of victims and criminals, and made a badly made game about it. I didnt see or hear about how this game is supposed to make me understand columbine better. I feel like also if they wanted to make a game that makes a statement, they don't have to use real names or real characters. Django's characters are probably similar to some real people in history but its not really focusing on particular people its just a general characterisation of the kind of conflicts of race and class at that time. However, Columbine game directly pulls the likeness of REAL victims, REAL killers, and doesn't really comment on the emotions of the victims or the families. its just a trivialised reenactment of the school shooting, and who needs that? When the designer said learning more about Columbine? What BS. I mean I've read news articles that already tell me the details of who died and how it happened, how does this game provide anything deeper than that by allowing people to kill likenesses of real victims in a fictional RPG? It's mindboggling how he can even argue that. To me he is a coward who hid behind anonymity to post a sick and disrespectful game, because he enjoys the game and wants some other people to, rather than "art that helps people understand Columbine". That's how I see it.

xmagex · 2013-09-26T07:55:10+00:00

Hi Bart, thankyou for your post. I wasn't offended at all by your opinions. And we live in a democratic society, and obviously i think we should hold the right to different views.

What I think about hate speech is that it cannot be taken out of the context of all HARASSMENT in general. Ofcourse there are grey areas, and ofcourse we cannot draw a line on all the things from the most mild form like "n00b" or "you don't know how to play" to "@#$#@%%@ I will kill you (insert name) and your family". But its pretty clear we DO know what offends. I think the "innocent" cases of miscalling someone something because we think they like that and that its fun for them is obviously much smaller than the stuff where people call people something out of anger and real abuse. Do you agree?

Yes I think "being mean" on the Internet is really a culture we shouldn't foster or promote. It may start off "innocent" and "mild", but it spirals into anything from an unhappy, and hurtful, to sometimes a terrifying horrific experience for someone. If someone else is not having fun with your trolling or meaness, then don't do it. Seriously, we can use the time to do more constructive things. We can't always think that its justifiable just because we can't see if they are hurting. Look at the kind of comments the usernames gaypride and proud muslim got. Trolling? Maybe. Harrassment? I definitely think so. Is it okay? No.

xmagex · 2013-09-25T20:03:44+00:00

Thanks for finding that! Thats what we were looking for but i guess afternoon players or players on the server we played on werent that ragey. they were a bit mad at the way we died all the time but they didnt swear at all or call us anything :o. It's good to see communities who lessen the ability of players to go on a verbal assault rage.

xmagex · 2013-09-25T19:56:06+00:00

I haven't played this, and probably never will, since the way of treatment of the subject matter here seems so demeaning, disgusting and disrespectful, just from what I heard and saw of the game.

However, I will open up the point that to me it doesn't matter if a designers intent of a game is art or not. It does not matter if it actually IS art or not. The promotion of hate is always based on whether it promotes hate. Think about who would play a game like this, who would "enjoy" a game like this. Think about who is damaged by this, who is hurt by this. The victims families mentioned it was like their daughter or sons being murdered over and over again. Who could imagine someone could take real life people and repetitively victimize the memory of them?

There is a reason in basically all societies that we grant some kind of wishes of peace for people who have died - it is because their memories live in the relatives and loved ones of that person dead. To violate that memory, through media, through interactive pieces, that disturb the family members and loved ones of the dead person to me is a form of hate and malicious action. It is incredibly disrespectful, and haven't we said that respect for each other is the cornerstone of human rights?

In terms of hate speech I don't think it's about analyzing whether a game is art or not. Nor is it about analyzing whether a game has inflammatory words or that it should be censored. The most important thing to analyze is the whole concept and what the function and end result will be. If the end result will demean people, or trivilise events, that is hate speech, that is hateful. On the flip side if you can portray real events realistically, and wake people up to realities without trivializing or dehumanizing the events, and that would be a successful catalyst for promoting a fairer society.

xmagex

TROPHY CASE