Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by 77lolmac77
Ok im gonna post one last time and then never read this thread agIn because itslike arguing with a brick wall.

I do not care if you were born, chose to be, tried it and are unsure, HOWEVER you got to be homosexual.

If you pay your taxes, dont commit crimes, are respectful, etc, the. I will have no problems with you.

But in my opinion: being gay IS NOT normal

Not that there is anything wrong with it, but its weird.

Sorry if anyone who is gay cant accept that

A lot of things are not normal, including being left handed.

If a person presents you with his left hand for a handshake, is he shoving his lefthandedness down your throat?

How about red hair (only 1-2% of the human population), is the person indecent by not wearing a hat and flaunting his not normal genes around you?

heheh very amusing and illustrative examples.

Originally posted by AdamTM

And suddenly the article seems to have been a bad idea, isn't it Mr. Barreiro.

 

Not necessarily a bad idea, but I can see the direction isn't going where I'd hope it would.

I stand by what I say though, when I talk about making game worlds safe for everyone to play in, where no one, for whatever reason, is treated like badly or like a second class citizen.

For instance, I welcome anyone with an opinion to post their opinion here, and I will rethink my ideas if there are valid issues that can change my opinion on a given point. That said, if people commenting here wish to be hostile or mean spirited,  people will probably react accordingly.

That said, I'm all for fart jokes and memes and whatnot... but again, I prefer not to be mean to other people on principle, and the DA piece for today was a reflection on what we can do to make our game worlds a more prosperous place.

Isn't the act of telling someone else that they are wrong in their intolerance and should be tolerant of all people somewhat intolerant in itself?  It seems that telling someone they are doing it wrong means you are not tolerating their chosen lifestyle.  Maybe they were brought up that way and don't know differently.  Is it still "their fault" they feel the way they do?  Can you really expect them to set aside everything they have been exposed to in life to this point and see the "correct" way of things?  Isn't that you being intolerant of what life has provided that person?

Tolerance is a slippery slope.  No, I don't think people should be tolerant of everything and everyone.  If someone annoys me, I tell them so.  If someone is rude to me, I call them on it.  Being "tolerant" isn't necessarily "better".

Originally posted by victorbjr

Originally posted by AdamTM

And suddenly the article seems to have been a bad idea, isn't it Mr. Barreiro.

 

Not necessarily a bad idea, but I can see the direction isn't going where I'd hope it would.

I stand by what I say though, when I talk about making game worlds safe for everyone to play in, where no one, for whatever reason, is treated like badly or like a second class citizen.

For instance, I welcome anyone with an opinion to post their opinion here, and I will rethink my ideas if there are valid issues that can change my opinion on a given point. That said, if people commenting here wish to be hostile or mean spirited,  people will probably react accordingly.

That said, I'm all for fart jokes and memes and whatnot... but again, I prefer not to be mean to other people on principle, and the DA piece for today was a reflection on what we can do to make our game worlds a more prosperous place.

Seems the community is not ready for that.

How could they, if developers themselves are not ready for it.

This brings to mind this article on Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39367/Opinion_Awful_Lot_Of_Heterosexuals_Around_Here.php

The comments in this article don't look too bad now, but at release, before the sanitation by mods, we had around 500 replies of the same nature as the first comment in this thread. 

Bare in mind Gamasutra is almost exclusively professionals that often wager their reputation of name when they post, not the random internet we have here.

I just think you were a bit optimistic about the outcome :)

---

Originally posted by killion81
Isn't the act of telling someone else that they are wrong in their intolerance and should be tolerant of all people somewhat intolerant in itself?  It seems that telling someone they are doing it wrong means you are not tolerating their chosen lifestyle.  Maybe they were brought up that way and don't know differently.  Is it still "their fault" they feel the way they do?  Can you really expect them to set aside everything they have been exposed to in life to this point and see the "correct" way of things?  Isn't that you being intolerant of what life has provided that person?
Tolerance is a slippery slope.  No, I don't think people should be tolerant of everything and everyone.  If someone annoys me, I tell them so.  If someone is rude to me, I call them on it.  Being "tolerant" isn't necessarily "better".

---

This. In a nutshell. Covered in dark chocolate...and white. :)

Originally posted by killion81

Isn't the act of telling someone else that they are wrong in their intolerance and should be tolerant of all people somewhat intolerant in itself?  It seems that telling someone they are doing it wrong means you are not tolerating their chosen lifestyle.  Maybe they were brought up that way and don't know differently.  Is it still "their fault" they feel the way they do?  Can you really expect them to set aside everything they have been exposed to in life to this point and see the "correct" way of things?  Isn't that you being intolerant of what life has provided that person?

Tolerance is a slippery slope.  No, I don't think people should be tolerant of everything and everyone.  If someone annoys me, I tell them so.  If someone is rude to me, I call them on it.  Being "tolerant" isn't necessarily "better".

Good that you already named the fallacy almost ad verbatum.

The difference between someone that is intollerant towards intollerance is that intollerance is unethical and works against society (better yet, ANY society)

If a chosen "lifestyle" (for example being racist) is harmful, then yes, we are not obliged to tollerate it.

This has nothing to do with "doing/thinking it wrong", it has to do with being harmful or not.

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by killion81

Isn't the act of telling someone else that they are wrong in their intolerance and should be tolerant of all people somewhat intolerant in itself?  It seems that telling someone they are doing it wrong means you are not tolerating their chosen lifestyle.  Maybe they were brought up that way and don't know differently.  Is it still "their fault" they feel the way they do?  Can you really expect them to set aside everything they have been exposed to in life to this point and see the "correct" way of things?  Isn't that you being intolerant of what life has provided that person?

Tolerance is a slippery slope.  No, I don't think people should be tolerant of everything and everyone.  If someone annoys me, I tell them so.  If someone is rude to me, I call them on it.  Being "tolerant" isn't necessarily "better".

Good that you already named the fallacy almost ad verbatum.

The difference between someone that is intollerant towards intollerance is that intollerance is unethical and works against society (better yet, ANY society)

If a chosen "lifestyle" (for example being racist) is harmful, then yes, we are not obliged to tollerate it.

This has nothing to do with "doing/thinking it wrong", it has to do with being harmful or not.

You don't get to define what is unethical though.  In a given society, lack of tolerance could provide a very real evolutionary advantage that significantly increased the chance of survival.  Intolerance of the weak is present in nature every single day.  Mother animals ditch the runts of a litter because it's probably not going to survive anyways and isn't worth the resources spent on it.  Realistically, if nature says it's ok and nature "made" humans, how can humans say nature is wrong?

Originally posted by killion81

Isn't the act of telling someone else that they are wrong in their intolerance and should be tolerant of all people somewhat intolerant in itself?  It seems that telling someone they are doing it wrong means you are not tolerating their chosen lifestyle.  Maybe they were brought up that way and don't know differently.  Is it still "their fault" they feel the way they do?  Can you really expect them to set aside everything they have been exposed to in life to this point and see the "correct" way of things?  Isn't that you being intolerant of what life has provided that person?

Tolerance is a slippery slope.  No, I don't think people should be tolerant of everything and everyone.  If someone annoys me, I tell them so.  If someone is rude to me, I call them on it.  Being "tolerant" isn't necessarily "better".

 

Hi. I'm not sure if you're addressing it to me, or to other folks, but I see what you mean and you put up a great point.

The comments are kind of derailing even me from my frame of my mind, though, so I hope you'll excuse me.

When we play games, we certainly don't come in loaded with thoughts about hating people for their actions, choices, or preoccupations. At the very least, I do not come into a game like RIFT or EVE thinking that I should go insult someone for being something I don't like today.

Games are supposed to be places where we can come together to get away from real life, and at times, real life issues like hate or misogyny come into games by virtue of player or developer occurrences. I feel, as a player of games, that I should do my part in making a game world welcoming to anyone who wants to play, and part of that is by opening up the idea that it's possible that what someone might be doing may not be cool to other people or can be hurtful.

Of course, everyone's welcome to disagree, and I'm cool with that, but I doubt the economic viability of a game in which part of its player base is emotionally miserable due to the conduct of other players. If you love the games you play, you should be happy others are playing... it keeps your game going, of course, if they're playing too. :)

What it should boil down too is whether or not a person is great or just an idiot, culture, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion should not factor in to that decision, if it does your doing it wrong and missing out on what the world has to offer.

Bringing it back to gaming.....We see it with the use of the word noob, it seems forgotten that there was once a distinction between a newb and a noob, the former just needed to learn while the latter fails to, they've become homogenised of late and the word noob too easily thrown around. I think there are a significant proportion of the gamer population not too kind to newbs and treat them as noobs, sad thing is it just cycles that behaviour as an acceptable way to become a non noob. Games don't help promote inclusion either, kill stealing, node stealing and other forms of griefing are in built by mechanics, that has to stop if we want to build real communities within our games. Then of course there are people who just want to play a game and dont give a crap about community, to them this conversation is moot.

Originally posted by victorbjr

Hi. I'm not sure if you're addressing it to me, or to other folks, but I see what you mean and you put up a great point.

The comments are kind of derailing even me from my frame of my mind, though, so I hope you'll excuse me.

When we play games, we certainly don't come in loaded with thoughts about hating people for their actions, choices, or preoccupations. At the very least, I do not come into a game like RIFT or EVE thinking that I should go insult someone for being something I don't like today.

Games are supposed to be places where we can come together to get away from real life, and at times, real life issues like hate or misogyny come into games by virtue of player or developer occurrences. I feel, as a player of games, that I should do my part in making a game world welcoming to anyone who wants to play, and part of that is by opening up the idea that it's possible that what someone might be doing may not be cool to other people or can be hurtful.

Of course, everyone's welcome to disagree, and I'm cool with that, but I doubt the economic viability of a game in which part of its player base is emotionally miserable due to the conduct of other players. If you love the games you play, you should be happy others are playing... it keeps your game going, of course, if they're playing too. :)

 

I do agree with this and I am always nice to people in a game setting by default.  I don't see any reason not be nice to some avatar that I am likely working with in some capacity to accomplish my goals within the game setting.  Of course, games offer nice features like "Ignore" that allow us to customize our in game experience to some degree.  If someone is annoying me, harassing me or just being an idiot, I can simply ignore them.  Problem solved and it only required a very slight effort on my part.

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by victorbjr

Originally posted by AdamTM

And suddenly the article seems to have been a bad idea, isn't it Mr. Barreiro.

 

Not necessarily a bad idea, but I can see the direction isn't going where I'd hope it would.

I stand by what I say though, when I talk about making game worlds safe for everyone to play in, where no one, for whatever reason, is treated like badly or like a second class citizen.

For instance, I welcome anyone with an opinion to post their opinion here, and I will rethink my ideas if there are valid issues that can change my opinion on a given point. That said, if people commenting here wish to be hostile or mean spirited,  people will probably react accordingly.

That said, I'm all for fart jokes and memes and whatnot... but again, I prefer not to be mean to other people on principle, and the DA piece for today was a reflection on what we can do to make our game worlds a more prosperous place.

Seems the community is not ready for that.

How could they, if developers themselves are not ready for it.

This brings to mind this article on Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39367/Opinion_Awful_Lot_Of_Heterosexuals_Around_Here.php

 

The comments in this article don't look too bad now, but at release, before the sanitation by mods, we had around 500 replies of the same nature as the first comment in this thread. 

Bare in mind Gamasutra is almost exclusively professionals that often wager their reputation of name when they post, not the random internet we have here.

 

I just think you were a bit optimistic about the outcome :)

 

Heyo,

Yes, I think I'm optimistic about stuff like this. It's the Devil's advocate in me that thinks, "well, maybe there'll be good discussion." :D

Thanks for the link. I'm going to open it up and have a read in a few.

Thank you also for being rather nice about pointing out logical fallacies and other stuff. It's been a long time since I've taken up logic and evolution and whatnot. :D

Originally posted by killion81

Isn't the act of telling someone else that they are wrong in their intolerance and should be tolerant of all people somewhat intolerant in itself?  It seems that telling someone they are doing it wrong means you are not tolerating their chosen lifestyle.  Maybe they were brought up that way and don't know differently.  Is it still "their fault" they feel the way they do?  Can you really expect them to set aside everything they have been exposed to in life to this point and see the "correct" way of things?  Isn't that you being intolerant of what life has provided that person?

Tolerance is a slippery slope.  No, I don't think people should be tolerant of everything and everyone.  If someone annoys me, I tell them so.  If someone is rude to me, I call them on it.  Being "tolerant" isn't necessarily "better".

context. 

it helps here too.  almost nothing in this world is always %100 right or %100 wrong.  there are clear exceptions in many cases/situations.  

its ok to:

hate hatred

kill a killer

be intolerant of intolerance

inflict pain on your child (spanking them) who just inflicted pain upon somebody else.

whine about  somebody who is whining about somebody else's whining (realizing that whining on its own is not a problem, its the HYPOCRISY of a person doing what they're complaining about somebody ELSE doing).  

Originally posted by killion81

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by killion81

Isn't the act of telling someone else that they are wrong in their intolerance and should be tolerant of all people somewhat intolerant in itself?  It seems that telling someone they are doing it wrong means you are not tolerating their chosen lifestyle.  Maybe they were brought up that way and don't know differently.  Is it still "their fault" they feel the way they do?  Can you really expect them to set aside everything they have been exposed to in life to this point and see the "correct" way of things?  Isn't that you being intolerant of what life has provided that person?

Tolerance is a slippery slope.  No, I don't think people should be tolerant of everything and everyone.  If someone annoys me, I tell them so.  If someone is rude to me, I call them on it.  Being "tolerant" isn't necessarily "better".

Good that you already named the fallacy almost ad verbatum.

The difference between someone that is intollerant towards intollerance is that intollerance is unethical and works against society (better yet, ANY society)

If a chosen "lifestyle" (for example being racist) is harmful, then yes, we are not obliged to tollerate it.

This has nothing to do with "doing/thinking it wrong", it has to do with being harmful or not.

You don't get to define what is unethical though.  In a given society, lack of tolerance could provide a very real evolutionary advantage that significantly increased the chance of survival.  Intolerance of the weak is present in nature every single day.  Mother animals ditch the runts of a litter because it's probably not going to survive anyways and isn't worth the resources spent on it.  Realistically, if nature says it's ok and nature "made" humans, how can humans say nature is wrong?

I'm sorry, when did this argument turn into Eugenics?

Because I thought we were past that with WW2 and I'm really not interested in regurgitating known facts about evolutionary morality and ethics.

Originally posted by jake200135

{mod edit}

 

I don't think Exilor understood what you were trying to say there. And I do agree with you on that point, yeah some like to create drama. My point was that you shouldn't judge all gays because a select few like to act like twats.

 

Of course, I think what he's refering to are people whose personalities are, 'gay'.

As two examples I have a long term friend whose gay and was previously in the closet for about twenty so years.  We rarely talk about him being gay because we have a lot of common interests in literature,film, etc. To him he's sexuality isn't a big deal, it's just something he is, and he's comfortable about that. Much like mine being straight isn't a big deal to me.

My wife on the other hand has a friend whose gay and he's personaility is gay as well.  He's only interested in discussing gay issues, gay lifestyle, camp and kitsch things and calling people out he think he's offending. It' apparently okay for him to be that way because he's gay and flamboyant people are like that, (?!) 

Basically he doesn't have much of a personality so he's taken on a gay personna to compensate.  It's a bit like those people who are really into cosplay or love Apple, their incapable of understanding anything outside that bubble because they created it to make themselves feel like they belong somewhere.

Those sorts of people get on my nerves because having any kind of discussion results in them either trying to turn it back on them or feeling offended by a contray opinion.  The fact of the matter is some people like being in a, 'minority' group because it makes them feel special, not easy to include those sorts in a general scheme.

Temporarily locking this until we can go through it.  I'll post again when reopened.

Please remember to remain civil and that this is in the Rules of Conduct for a reason:

Hateful Content

• Hateful content includes, but is not limited to, discriminating comments about: race, ethnicity (what country someone is from), religion, age, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status and political beliefs. MMORPG.com holds complete and total discretion to decide what is hateful.

I'm reopening the thread now. Please remember to keep to the topic at hand, and to actually discuss points.

Be civil, and don't make it personal. 

Thanks, guys.

Given the age in which we live, did we really need a column dealing with Political Correctness? (also known as cultural Marxism). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism

Yes, I know this is Devils Advocate, and thus meant to drive page views, but couldn't some topic more relevant to gaming have been the topic of discussion?

I know that respect for individual rights and responsibilities has long since been passed over, in favor of what is good for this, or that group within the collective, but that doesn't make it right.

People are people. Respect for individuals, not collectives should be the foundation of not only society, but the games we choose to play as well.

Real inclusion comes from focus on what unites us, not what divides us.

I have many things I want to say just from being upset. Normally I don't say a thing. I know that in LoL that I will walk away from my team at times to take a few minutes to calm down. I normally want to just scream and ask "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?". I won't say that I can't cause that in others. I do try and not use any negative words though can't say that I am 100% successful though pretty sure that I only use them on vent with my friends.

The problem is that there is as much going on in reality as there is the internet. Too many people think in the "ME" sense. I have shocked people at counters for saying "Thank you and have a good day" as for them it is just what they are taught to say for the job and I just view it as common courtesy. I wave to someone and point at myself and say "my fault" when driving and do something stupid. I will also admit that I am doing badly when playing a game if necessary but unless playing a FPS with a mission of advancing and capturing points from the defense with a team of snipers then I might ask if we are all suppose to be playing snipers instead of trying to win. I do try and be good to  the best of my ability and I don't try to see the internet as being a shield for me to be an @$$ that I see many do. I am too afraid of making mad the one person who goes off the deep end and hacks me to find me and hack into me with some weapon.

Unfortunately, I don't think asking people to be nice works where the technology permits anonymity.  In the real world, consideration for others is encouraged by web of reciprocal relationships.  Extreme anti-social behavior can be sanctioned.

However on the Internet, depending on game mechanics, those controls are much weaker and/or non-existent.

The result is the dark side of gaming - the flourishing of subcultures that are openly antagonistic and hate-filled.  Chiding or complaining about this behavior is useless or counter-productive.  In the absence of any reciprocal relationships, people have no inhibition about being dirtbags. In the absence of meaningful sanction, bad behavior is not deterred.  And it doesn't take many bad apples to spoil the barrel - a relatively small part of a gaming population can poison a much larger environment, particularly if their behavior involves things like hacks and gold duping or is enabled by a permissive PVP ruleset (e.g. open world full loot).

Complaining, whether in-game or on forums, is counterproductive because that actually feeds the bad actors - they LIKE the attention, even (or perhaps especially) because it is negative.  They ENJOY the displeasure they are causing others.

The first casualty, ironically, is player freedom.  Unable to find a method to keep the bad seeds from driving off other customers, games become more and more theme-parkish.  Player choice and freedoms are restricted so that, in order to limit what the bad actors can do, you also eliminate game play options for good actors. 

The answer for some is to adopt a "hard core" attitude and pretend the problem either doesn't exist or is the fault of people being over-sensitive (e.g. "its just a game!").  But that is no solution for the people who enjoy online gaming for its potential immersive and creative aspects.  A world by, for and run-by jerks is not a world they want to be part of.