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In recruitment messages she posted on WoW, she wrote that the guild was not "'glbt only,' but we are 'glbt friendly.'"
To WoW publisher Blizzard Entertainment, however, Andrews' message was out of bounds. The Irvine, Calif.-based game publisher said her recruiting was a violation of the game's harassment policy, specifically the section of that policy regarding sexual orientation. Andrews was quickly warned in an e-mail to stop recruiting inside the game and to take all such efforts to forums outside WoW's virtual world. Andrews was also warned that if she didn't stop recruiting for the guild inside WoW, she risked being banned from the game.
News.context
What's new:
A member of a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender virtual gaming guild posted a welcome message on the "World of Warcraft" site saying that the guild was "glbt friendly." She was warned by the site publisher to stop on-site recruiting, or risk being banned from the site.
Bottom line:
The incident has generated debate about the way the site's rules are being enforced by the game's publisher, Blizzard Entertainment, which says it is only trying to protect the guild from harassment by other gamers. The GLBT guild and others in the gaming world dispute that contention.
In essence, Andrews and gay and lesbian rights advocates charge, Blizzard was trying to keep a lid on harassment in its gaming world by blocking players from doing things that could prompt other people to harass them.
"Their (terms of service) statement was clearly crafted to protect the GLBT community," said Ron Meiners, a longtime virtual worlds consultant who has served as a community manager for companies like Ubisoft and There.com. "And I think they wanted to basically protect them in this instance, too. But they seem to have overstepped what was appropriate."
Andrews said she thinks Blizzard, or at least the game master (company employees who control game play and make decisions about low-level controversies) who issued the warning, wasn't being fair. The harassment policy specifically prohibits language that "insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation pertaining to themselves or others." Since Andrews was hardly insulting herself, she couldn't understand how or why the harassment policy was being applied to her.
"I wasn't sure that it was Blizzard that felt this way at first," she said. "I kind of felt like a bad (game manager) took care of the situation poorly. But the more I see Blizzard backing up the decision, the more I believe Blizzard to be handling the situation poorly."
With more than 5.5 million players since it was launched in 2004, WoW is arguably the most successful online fantasy game in America. So how it defines gaming rules and says what people can and cannot do can have a wide-ranging impact in virtual communities.
A Blizzard spokesman said it was only trying to enforce a policy designed to protect all WoW members from being harassed. And in fairness, in a gaming world where many players are young, male and prone to hurling insults, that the company wants to avoid potential problems makes sense.
"We encourage community building among our players with others of similar interests, and we understand that guilds are one of the primary ways to forge these communities," the company said in a statement. "However, topics related to sensitive real-world subjects--such as religious, sexual or political preference, for example--have had a tendency to result in communication between players that often breaks down into harassment."
See more CNET content tagged:
harassment,
Blizzard Entertainment,
recruiting,
community,
virtual worlds
I am a father of two children, ages two and three. So it does not impact me now, but it sets a precedent for toe future. I would never condem two men or two women kissing on the street. I also would never be upset about any innocent form of fondling in public by girl with boy, boy with boy, or girl ith girl. But in any combination of these, if a member of any gender were grouping inappropriately in a playground where my children were playing I would be thouroughly offended.
There is a time and place for everything. Sexuality is a topic which some parents feel is best left for adulthood or late adolesence. If I were a anal retentive parent from Kansas, I would likely be horrified that my child was playing a game that allowed public exposure of sexual preferences, I would be horrified by players with names like "12inchshlong" as well.
Now as a parent, when my son sees two guys kissing (we're in Europe, not anal retentiveland) on the street, I explain to my son if he notices (and 3 year olds notice everything) that some boys like other boys and some girls like other girls. Sometimes they like both. But I would not be happy if my 13 year old child (don't have one yet) were playing a video game that would cause him/her to possibly prematurely question his sexuality. It's not the time or the place.
I mention this because I regularly find myself playing online with kids that age. I have nieces and nephews that age that are in fact still quite innocent. It is not up to the other players to judge when the best time to present the issue of sexual orientation to other peoples children.
When I see that the license agreement of a game clearly states that this is not the place to deal with these issues, I expect other players to respect that and more importantly to enforce it.
Go to a bar, go to a district, go to a chat server that addresses adult issues. Do not use a video game as a place to do this. We're talking about basically the next step up from Mario Bros. Respect other people and respect that the other players may not be of the appropriate age group.
Keep in mind one other thing, even if you're not in agreement with my thoughts on the topic, at least respect that simply by being what is still considered a political and religious issue to many of the unemployed rednecks playing the game, the flame wars will likely be obscene and inappropriate for much of the viewing audience. The response by ignorant players should be enough to make even a truck driver consider ducking and hiding.
The biggest problem the gay and lesbian community faces in gaining acceptance is how people cope with the issue of sexual topics being delt with in a mature and rational way. Many people that their tax dollars are spent on congress discussing sexually related topics such as gay and lesbian marriage. Never mind the fact that it should simply be a question of legality. Many supporters of gay rights simply don't believe that it should be an public issue. Gay and lesbian tolerance shouldn't have to be taught in schools, it fact, it shouldn't have to be taught, it should just be. But it definately should not be paraded all over main street. What occurs in a persons house should stay in their house just like the moron at the office bragging about the fling with 3 chicks the other night should also stay out of the office.
This game is not the appropriate place for these types of issues. If you find another player that you genuinely believe would be interested in your sexuality, have a nice /w discussion with them. You can even go on raids together, but you cross a line when you make it an issue of a public nature.
In the future, try a new guild name like "Rainbows", I know it's cliqued, but everyone that's old enough to know, know's what it means and instead of recruiting publicly, simply warn people asking for a membership to the guild that "Rainbows" refers to something about your lifestyle, if they still don't understand, ask them how old they are. If they're under 16, let them know that the guild typically discusses topics of an adult oriented nature and you do not allow members that are too young since you'd prefer to not risk offending thier parents.
I really wish that news.com would've done a little bit better job at presenting both sides of the issue here. Reading through the article (while it does appear attempts were made at impartiality) it definitely seems to favor the GLBT people that are complaining. I'm going to guess this is because the author is without all the information, as I can say as someone who does play this game and has kept up with the issue -- it's all over the world of warcraft community -- there are errors in their 'facts'. Specifically, the warning was issued due to messages broadcast on general channels in the game, not because of postings on some WoW site. While this may not seem important, it is something that you would really expect respected news organization such as news.com to have correct if they want to present an informative and unbiased issue and it makes you question whether or not you're being given all the information.
The point is that sexual orientation has no being discussed in public channels on a video game that is rated for teens (rated for people as young as 13). It's not forcing GLBT people to 'stay in the closet' or opressing them in anyway. Blizzard (the makers of World of Warcraft) is seems to be taking the same (and very fair) method as none other than the U.S. Military.
It's very simple. When you're in a situation that doesn't involve your sexual orientation in any way shape or form, i.e., video games or fighting wars, don't ask don't tell. In both cases this IS an attempt to PROTECT people from being harassed. Not to discriminate. It would be wholly unfeasible to allow people to broadcast sexual orientation everywhere and not incur harassment. There is no way Blizzard could go through punishing all the people doing the harassment as it would be rampant and many cases would go unreported. As such, I firmly believe their current policy is the appropriate one.
I would not want my son exposed to some of the crap that goes on in WoW. Flame wars start over the dumbest crap, because someone just can't let something go.
I think you are right that there are more discreet ways of recruiting than shouting it out in the main "cities" of the game.
I am 30 and one day while playing I had to take a call from work and found out that 3 other people I was playing with were in Jr. High, good thing I keep the thought children are playing in my head. I thought they were adults given I was online during school hours and they thought I was another kid out on their snow day, showing that our preconceptions can be completely wrong.
But there is much more to this story than this article covered, as well. I've been following this issue through game-related forums Ms. Andrews has been trolling to drum up support for her cause, and I really can see both sides of the story. There is much more in the TOS and EULA specifically concerning Blizzard's responsibilities and authority over in-game chat than the "no insulting" clause Ms. Andrews repeatedly quotes. I hope that in future articles, CNET will delve a little deeper and share the other sides of this story with its readers.
These people want their own guild so they can make their game experience as friendly as possible. That's all. Anyone who has played knows perfectly well that you are about 100000% more likely to come across anti-gay remarks than you are a player who is openly gay. What you SHOULD be concerned about exposing your kids to is all of the HOMOPHOBIA that goes on in the game.
I can't believe in the year 2006 people are still so ignorant.
But to wave a big flag in people's faces and to expect to not draw harassment is naive.
I quess what I'm saying is don't make yourself a target and then expect protection when the harassment comes.
Blizzard did right as far as I'm concerned.
Each player does represent an instance of real life intruding into fantasy land, so in a very real sense, WOW society cannot refrain from being a mirror to the real world. Thus, issues about whether you like cats and am a gay republican will ievitably pop up in the game. However, the question boils down to whether Blizzard has an obligation to uphold the mirror of reality that it's players bring into the game.
I believe that every governing body is obligated to uphold the society that created it. Blizzard, however, is a governing body that has created a ficticious society to which you have been invited to join. Blizzards beliefs parallel the players beliefs only to the extent that both want the player to have fun and that the code be designed to facilitate that fun. They are not obligated to uphold the players sense of good will stemming from beliefs that have nothing to do with this game.
Don't believe for a second that MMO's are automatically a democracy, they are all first and foremost an autocracy designed to facilitate fun. If Blizzard believes some issue will detract from that fun, they are fully in their right to excise that issue from the game.
I did eventually find one, but I no longer play the game now. It would be nice to not need a guild such as this, but with the way the community currently behaves, it is somewhat neccessary.
All of this talk about not wanting your children introduced to sexuality on an on line game is ludacrous. If they are involved in an online game, they are exposed to it. All of it. The good and the bad. Weather it be the trash talking slurs that seem to be a constant in WoW, or the "polite" counters to them such as the glbt guild. Apparently, most of you that have the comments about your children would rather they hear the phrases, taunts, and other things used to bash gays & lesbians, rather than have your kids hear the simple term "glbt". *** is up with that? You don't want them to know what glbt stands for? Make something up for Pete's sake.
There wouldn't be a need for any of this if the bashing didn't occur non-stop in the first place. No one anywhere has mentioned how pervasive it is on that game. Maybe if Blizzard handed out a few punishments for the blatent abuse instead of fostering it, this discussion would never have taken place. Instead, they just seem to want all the people to be "un-homogenized". As stated earlier in another post, "Homogenized? Nah I like the ladies." is a phrase used by player characters in the game.
The bottom line here is that their code is to protect people from harassment, not to protect them from being who they are (Or the characters they may with to ROLE PLAY). I would be INFINITELY more worried about my kids just surfing the internet where EVERY kind of disgusting perversion can be instantly accessed than them actually interacting with real humans. At least real people are alive and are not just going to be dehumanized images or video. Also, maybe they should consider a server for people under a certain age to seperate "adults" from "kids". Look at the statistics people, gamers arent just "kids" anymore. the average gamer is close to 30 making your 13 year olds the EXPCEPTION more than the rule.
Finally, I think it's sad that as a gay person your only "OK" venue of interaction is some bar, chat room, or dark corner out of societies view. I for one have no intention of hiding who or what I am (gay or straight) to anyone of any age. That would infer that I was emabarrased or that something was wrong with who I was. That is not acceptable. There is nothing wrong with homosexuality or sexuality in general, and that is the message that should be enforced.
Thank you.
Keep the sex out of the games. It's really for the best.
Part of the reason that the hatred of gays continues unabated to this day is the fact that parents believe that silence on the issue of sexuality is equivalent to shielding their children from the issue of sexuality. Children are aware earlier than you probably think. As a school teacher, I have witnessed this firsthand, as I deal with young children day in and day out. By the time you think they are ready to discuss sexuality issues, they are already in late adolescence and their primary concern is fitting into a social scene that has already solidified its negative attitude toward gays...and not just gays, but toward a lot of other inward and outward human differences.
You seem to be saying that there is a specific age wherein children should be informed about certain issues you deem controversial, and I am in complete agreement with that. Foremost, I would be concerned that there should be extreme guidelines and restrictions regarding children being exposed to the intense degree of violence inherent in the game [WoW]. While Blizzard does have an age requirement ( not sure what it is ) it behooves thoughtful parents to decide when their particular child is psychologically prepared to distinguish between fantasy role-play, and reality.
Too often, parents play with five-year old children at their side staring at the screen. In such cases, it is a blessing if they haven't yet learned to read, because the level of profanity and obscenity can be shocking, particularly when one comes to realize that the perpetrators are essentially children, themselves. One can only assume these children, often just twelve years old, are left to their own devices at the pc, with absolutely no adult supervision. Some children of twelve are quite mature, and socially amiable, while others remind you they are without adult attention, by the means with which they seek attention online.
Your concern regarding exposing children to even the slightest influence of diversity is belied by allowing (presumably) your young relatives to banter around the term "gay" in reference to everything they think bad; "that's so gay"," WoW is gay.", and so on. Do you honestly think there is detrimental influence in the announcement of a "g/l/b/t-friendly guild" available?
As for enforcement of rules against the use of such terms. . . Blizzard has made no serious attempt to halt the use of profanity, obscenities, and even the insulting use of the term "gay" in its General and Trade chat. I still see the character who posted "Kill all ****! on WoW, though I must say he doesn't post that any longer. Would all of that be acceptable for your nieces and nephews, while Recruitment announcements for g/l/b/t-friendly would not? If so, I find your missive rather hypocritical.
Further, you rave about issues irrelevant to the subject of this discussion. There is no general discussion of gay marriage, gay sex, or the like, on WoW, unless the children of, no doubt, intolerant families are discussing them. In fact, most gay members of WoW do not respond to such bait and taunt tactics, because they realize they are emanating from children, so they simply place the offender/s on Ignore. I disagree with most of your points on the subject, as well, and could destroy your straw men, point by point, but as I said, that is all irrelevant to the subject of this discussion. I must say, however, your missive is rife with bigotry, stereotyping, and a complete lack of understanding of the points you so poorly raised. The very fact that you claim to be "strong believer" in gay rights, and then go on to enumerate, wrongfully, what they are, demonstrates you're a far worse influence on children, in my honest opinion, than most g/l/b/t I know.
Tonywwk
Cowaabunga
Level 72 Tauren Warrior
Garona Realm
WoW
Food for though: It's easy to get around this, by saying that her character is the lesbian. Then Blizzard would have to ban homosexuality in characters, which would certainly cause some players to be less than pleased.
Moreover, the solution you suggest, of role-playing as a homosexual, completely misses the point of Ms. Andrews' guild, and I'm fairly sureit would violate the EULA and TOS more directly than the current issue of her public channel spam-recruiting.
The issue has nothing to do with 'exposing kids about sexuality,' either. All of you who feel there should be no elements of non-conventional sexuality in a "T"-rated release, why weren't you whining as the Sims became the best-selling PC game in history?
times.
group that touts itself as Hetero?
Monkey-huggers should have rights too!!
It's a valid request.
It's too bad parent's can't enable a flag on their children's character that would enable them to join specially flagged guilds marked for children, but alas, I feel that some sick adults would flag themselves for those guilds as well... I posted on that very issue later on in the string...
Fact is that in a game there is no place for these kinds of things... and if you're so sensitive about anti-gay remarks, for god's sake, stop playing the game... nobody is making you pay to play, you're paying them just for the right to play on their servers...
Maybe Blizzard should make a special gay server that you can have customer service flag your account for & that you otherwise can't get access to. This seems a much more reasonable solution.
If they want to keep ignorant adolescent boys from harassing gays, it makes perfect sense to allow guilds that say, in game, that they are specifically for GLBT and GLBT-friendly players only. This way, gay players and their friends can join a guild where they automatically know they will not be judged, insulted or harassed. The contact between homophobes and normal people will be minimized and there will be less chance for harassment.
As for your kids, too bad. Like any other players, the glbt guild should be held to standards of conduct that include no sexually explicit language. So the only thing your precious children would be exposed to is the EXISTENCE of gay players and a gay-friendly guild. Big deal. Gay people exist, and if you are insistant upon keeping your children away from them then DON'T LET THEM PLAY A GAME WHERE THEY COME IN CONTACT WITH ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE. This is essentially a public space where they could be exposed to all kinds of people. If you don't want to allow them to be exposed to a diverse public, keep them off the game, out of chatrooms, away from the television and don't let them out of the house without you.
Blizzard's position is ridiculous.
Do you mean to imply there should also be "Republican" and "Republican-friendly" guilds? What about "Christian" and Christian-friendly guilds? "Swinger" and "Swinger-friendly" guilds? "Homophobe" and "Homophobe-friendly" guilds? "Nazi" and "Nazi-friendly" guilds? And should all of these guilds be allowed to recruit in public chat channels? Even if another player complains about it to a GM?
Allowing one special interest, it seems you have to allow them all. That, or draw a line. But if you're going to draw a line, where do you draw it?
General chat is not the place to advertise this guild. Any issue of
an incendiary nature is not allowed in general chat. Advertising
a gay-friendly guild, a straights-only guild, a white power guild,
a socialist guild... none of these are allowed in general chat.
However, Blizzard does allow advertising these guilds in the
game forums. Blizzard does allow these guilds to exist in game.
Ms. Andrews would scream and yell just as much about
something advertising a straight guild as she is now yelling
about being told not to advertise a gay-friendly guild.
Also in term of that arguemtns there are some guilds that already have a particular focus such as things as a cat-lovers guild, should they be disbanded becasue I like dogs, and that I might call them losers for liking cats. No! Punish the person doing the harrasement not the people who might be harrased.
On the other hand (just to use the most extreme example that pops into my head) it would be one thing to have an "Al Qaeda-friendly" guild, where members might discuss (in private) their hatred of Israel and the West, but it's a different thing to publicly spam-advertise your "'Vengeful Death To Amoral Capitalism'-friendly" guild. I think this might be so distracting, exclusionary, and offensive as to justify GM intervention.
I don't think Blizzard had any problem with Ms. Andrews running her GLBT-friendly guild. She was just asked not to advertise it as such in public chat channels.
The dog lovers make a guild and actively recruit members. They want a "better gaming experience" because they want to chat about dogs while killing mobs and running quests.
The cat lovers hear about this and call out to all like minded people to form a "cat lover only" guild. They know they can't get the other guild disbanded because the GMs have said they are ok with "special interest" guilds now (fearing the dog lovers lawyers mostly) so the decide to take matter into their own hands.
The cat lovers begin a campaign of ganking, spawn camping, out right PvP killing and engage the dog lovers solely because they are a dog loving guild and not any other reason. They don't SAY anything to them (except the normal smack talk) in game, but they kill and "dog" them in the game as much as possible.
So how much fun is the dog loving guild having now?
All this occurs because they had to bring their RL philosophy into a game, where all that should not be a factor. It doesn't matter what your "special interest" is. There is nothing to say it's wrong or right, just that people are not to be verbally harassed about it. But allowing focused guilds to be based around them bypass this much needed protection.
Enjoy the fantasy and leave RL at the door.
extent, I believe that this policy is mostly about business. Any
online community, such as chatrooms, online dating sites, etc,
has to be sensitive to protection of minors. WoW certainly caters
to minors. They have to have a staunch policy in some ways
because if they aren't careful, they will be sued, and sued, and
sued some more if it is found that they didn't do enough to
protect members of their community from harrassment, which is
a pretty subjective thing. Imagine young Billy tellilng his parents
that he just joined a guild of very nice people that call
themselves glbt. In many homes, that would be the last time
Billy played WoW. Blizzard just wants to prevent a political or
religious battle ground. All in all, I think they are just making a
wise business decision in trying to stay out of the sensitive
topics as best they can. In this particular instance, it just seems
to have backfired a bit.
to worry about the possibility of sexuality (any flavor) becoming a
factor. With the hyper-sensitive climate we live in, you just can't
take a chance. There is always somebody waiting to file a law suit.
As an alternative, WoW could have set-up adults only servers.
If Blizzard's response offends you that much you do have another
option: vote with your pocket book. Same as when Walmart comes
to town, you can choose to take your custom elsewhere.
In order to define the base of our woes let us diffuse the situation into the simplest of components. In the generic sense what we have is a fictitious world, fictitious character, real world, real person, and perception. I mention perception here because it is vital to what is at stake in the argument.
If an individual chooses to participate in WoW and their perception of that game is one of complete fiction, then nothing that happens in the game can affect their real life perceptions. Performance artists do this every day they step into a ?role?, and therefore any personal attacks against their character do not affect their real perception of themselves or the real person making the attacks. If however the individual who chooses to participate in WoW perceives that world to be a subset of reality, and not completely fictitious, then what goes on in the game really can affect them personally.
And now we reach the crux of the situation as the lure of WoW is not the game play itself, but the pseudo-reality it offers. A subset of reality that filters out all the things you don?t like, leaving only those you enjoy. Early ancestors to the now extremely popular MMORPG were completely text-based, but offered basically the same functionality, and the lure to those games was exactly the same. It was the virtual community it offered, and the persona you could create through your character. It was a chance to make yourself into something you could not be, to escape into a reality that was more pleasing than your current reality and perceive the ?real world? in a different way than it really is. However, when too much reality begins to creep into your fictitious world, it ruins your perception, and the fantasy is lost. When this happens the ?game? becomes to much like the real world and the lure is gone.
This is the problem, and it always will be with games like this. It will take on an infinite number of forms as we continue to search for a nirvana that doesn?t exist.
Gameplay are those elements intrinsic to WoW.
Sexual orientation is NOT intrinsic to WoW.
Therefore, Sexual orientation is NOT needed gameplay.
I've been in enough MMORPGs to know that you don't have to be gay, bi, straight, black, white or aquamarine to be harassed by other players. The reality is that some people out there just ENJOY making other people feel bad about themselves. I'm no psychologist, but in my experience, such behavior comes about when people want to draw attention away from their own percieved flaws. My point is: Ending recruitment for ANY type of group is not going to protect them from harassment.
I myself have made several insulting and rude comments out of frustration. Many of them were made at specific people. But I didn't know if these people were gay, straight, black, white, conservative, liberal, whatever. Their actions angered me, and I vented that anger without consideration for their feelings.
I think that the money Blizzard is putting behind Burning Crusade would be put to better use by hiring more GMs to police the servers and uphold the policies _as they are_.