A few weeks ago, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) announced a new project to fight homophobia in virtual communities, including gaming communities. Three months ago, I was invited to participate in a conference call with GLAAD so they could gather views and opinions about homophobia in gaming from regular gamers to prepare for an outreach initiative to…
After I started my new job at ArenaNet a few months ago, I was going to respond immediately to the bigoted, ignorant, and narrow-minded views of several people in various gaming communities. Since then I’ve been busy at work and at home, and frankly I haven’t been in much of a mood to blog, nor have I been able to…
Priceless quote from a commenter on a recent Joystiq post about Gaymer.org (emphasis mine): I’m sick of hearing about gay gamers and female gamers. When 90% of their audience is straight men, why would any developer care about any of you? I know that trying to segregate yourselves is a lame attempt at getting a bit of love from devs,…
There has been much heated discussion about the recent Blizzard PR debacle stemming from an incident in which a player was reprimanded by a GM for advertising for her gay-friendly guild in a general chat channel. The discussion expanded to debate the “visibility” of a player’s and/or a character’s sexual orientation in-game. The debate has been frustrating at times. Particularly…
Several of the Terra Nova folk have written an open letter to Blizzard. They ask the publisher of World of Warcraft for a formal statement saying that their Game Master was wrong to sanction player Sara Andrews for recruiting for her gay-friendly guild in WOW‘s public chat channels. They also ask that Blizzard make a public statement about the issues…