Fighting game community put on blast.

Any thoughts? Granted VFDC is pretty far removed from the antics involved with other communities. I just wanted to see what people thought of the Aris Cross Assault scandal here?

 

I've only seen bits of the whole drama (I can't bring myself to watch too much of Cross Assault - it makes me feel queasy) but I thought that Aris was really annoying and most of the stuff he was saying did cross the line (pun not intended) and wouldn't be tolerated in any other place of work and would lead to disciplinary procedures (I assume he and Valle are being paid for the coaching roles).

People saying that Aris was only being himself which is why it's okay is ridiculous. I don't know the guy personally, and he may be the nicest guy you could meet, but from the CA clips I've watched where you can hear him commentating, he sounds and behaves like a complete prick with no social skills whatsoever and I wouldn't have been surprised if Superyan had punched him.

Then again, maybe this was all a work by Capcom. Whether it's good or bad, they're getting a lot of publicity from not just the FGC.

 

I've read a fair bit about this over the last few days, I don't agree with the behaviour in the stream but I don't feel like i'm entitled to much of an opinion when I don't know the players involved.

What bugs me is that a lot of sites (especially kotaku) seem to be attacking the fighting game community as a whole for this, harassment and bullying on that level have no place anywhere and it feels like the entire community is being blamed for the actions of a few.

 

You know why this is? Aris said that sexual harrassment is part of the fighting game community and that you can't have the culture without it.

If you ever saw the chats in a fighting game stream it seems to confirm it. The problem is, when you look at the internet it's sort of like looking into an ocean, seeing all the fish but picking out only one type of fish and saying it has scales. The interent is full of shit cock not just the fighting game community.

The problem is when that shitcock gets taken into the real world. Even the most dislikeable forum posters I've seen knows the difference. Aris however is genuinely an asshole so I saw this coming.

 

Let's be honest: This suddenly becomes an issue over at SRK because gaming news blogs got wind of it and sponsors/capcom are upset.

It's extremely disingenuous for them to do the damage control now as a reaction to these pervasive and disturbing attitudes that permeate gaming fandoms -- or the outside world where most of the hate just goes conveniently unspoken but still occurs. Also it gives commercial sites like Kotaku or Giant Bomb a nice story so they can fish for clicks.

The actual points the management at SRK are making aren't controversial at all, for what it's worth. And yet, I've seen friends try to undertake this discussion regarding gender roles waaay in the past and they were still shouted down by other posters at SRK. I tried to do this about a month ago, having copped a somewhat less trollish demeanor, and I was met with strong resistance from people spouting platitudes in the form of biotruths and specious rationalizations. I sure as hell do not have the patience for it!

I'm not sure what they could say about it that hasn't been said. Tournaments aren't classrooms and the events sure aren't a political forum. A lot of people don't want to spend leisure time trying to persuade people that their attitudes are informed by stereotypes and faulty reasoning. The lack of proactive steps Wizard/Cannons/SRK Staff against hate speech in the past undermines their credibility a great deal with this -- as it should, imo. It's their job now.

 

All that is true, but give them a shot to change before condemning.

What we need to do is make sure that this junk doesn't become a part of VF's culture.

 

It's really not a part of the culture here. That's why I still fucks with people over here.

 

Is this the vid in question? I ignored the topic because I had no idea what was going on...

Shit game, shit community, shitty looking dork making sexist comments...whats new. I think we should send tengu over to them.

 

I think the real issue is the fact that Aris just goes on and on, it's semi-sadistic. It'd be one thing to make an off-color joke here or there, but to just relentlessly harass the poor girl crossed the line. That girl seemed really nice too, just not the kind of person you should be bullying for all to see -- not a good look...

I would agree it's been blown out of proportion, but I think Aris brought even more of that on by being unapologetic when he should have been.

 

I'm not really surprised at all and I don't think it should really be a surprise to any fighting game veteran. It's a male dominant community and this type of attitude isn't isolated in just fighting games.

As streams became more popular, people are just now noticing it. That's all.

 

Fighting game community on blast?!

What about the FPS community? What about WoW? What about the League of Legends/DOTA community? Those guys are just as bad, and half the time they're not even trash talking, because they're bad mouthing their own teammates. You hear stuff from them like "I had to really carry the game hard on this match because we have 2 girls on our team." and "We lost because we had a girl player." The only difference is no one said it in a big time event. My mother-in-law plays WoW and the number of times she's heard "Ha! Girls play games?!" is astounding.

I'm a lot more tolerant on trash talk towards your opponent, but I hate people who shit on their own team mates.

Aris definitely crossed the line there. He obviously felt that someone with better skills should have been chosen for his team instead of that girl, but rather than work with it, he decided to put her on blast, and he chose the most hurtful thing possible, because that's how some people trash talk. If Miranda was Hispanic or Asian or had a funky accent, I'm quite sure he would have blasted her on that too.

And this stuff can be fine with people you know well. My friends make fun of my accent and the fact I'm Asian all the time. It's when you think it's ok to do it to people you've just met that it gets you into trouble. That's the thing. Many gamers feel that since they're with fellow gamers they can drop common courtesy. You can't.

Personally, I think it's great we have girl gamers. I have utmost respect for serious girl gamers like First Angel from VF4 era, who easily beat the crap out of me and my brother when we were in Japan.

Yeah, sometimes it irks me when some girls have that "Teehee I'm a girl you have to let me win" attitude, or the "Oh you can't expect me to play seriously, I'm just a girl" type, but those are so few and far between that it's not worth assuming all girl gamers are like that.

Capcom tried something simple. They tried to get some more girl gamers in to the community by putting those 2 girls in Cross Assault, yet the hardcore community got all defensive, as they have been towards other E-Sports developments in the past.

That being said, there are many in the SF community who feel that the spots on Cross Assault should have gone to the people with the highest skill levels. I agree with that. Why have some mediocre gamer over top players who are also incredibly interesting characters themselves, like Xian from Singapore with his epic eyebrows? I can understand to some extent the enmity towards the girl because she took the place of someone who could have shown us some far greater gameplay.

However, here was a wasted oppurtunity to be more accepting of girl gamers. Instead, it's given us an bad rep which will take a while to erase, even though you see this kind of behaviour in so many other games. I can agree we could be less abrasive, but I feel this is something so many other gaming communities are guilty of, so it's unfair to single us out.

 

I lol'd. I don't really care about this either. I think we should lead by example. None of that happens at VFDC and AFAIK we're all a pretty mature bunch, so nowt to worry about on our end.

 

Your post conveys the impression that "none of that happens at VFdc" by accident. I feel it's necessary to underline once again that this is no accident, it happens because Myke has the banhammer ready, on purpose, just to avoid this type of behaviour. Eg.

also other recent bans like K.O. or Tengu.

I'm only aware that this happens from time to time by reading "X was banned" on the shoutbox. If i try to browse their posts just to see WHY they were banned i never seem to find anything particularly offensive - and that's because posts have been edited or removed.

I'm not saying VFdc moderation is impeccable but, when it comes down to filtering discrimination based on random demographic criteria, Myke and the other mods appear to be very vigilant

 

Glory said it perfectly. Someone posted this shit in the a FB group and everyone replied "This doesn't happen in this community". No more needs to be said.


Can't wait to beast on you a-holes in FS.

 

That's not the Fighting game community,or the STreet Fighter or Tekken community who are assholes in general. It's just the Video Gamer community in general. For example, look at all the sexist, graphically harrassing comments in the comment section about Jessica Chobot or Naomi Kyle on IGN Daily Fix or The Weekly Wood.


My girlfriend plays on PSN,and she has to take all kinds of sexist shit talk from other players. and no, she doesn't play fighting games. It's when there is a mob of hard up losers who never/rarely ever get laid encounter a female in their boys club, a lot of them act like jerks. It's Aris who fits in that category. Does he honestly think he's being funny or charming? The sad part is he probably does, hence he probably never gets laid. He encounters a semi hot girl and doesn't know how to act. I mean,his jokes and antics are sub-high school level.

Anyway, the worst part of all that sexual harassment was it wasn't even funny. Why were the producers MIA, they should have stepped in to tone it down. Or give Aris an inflatable girl to occupy him.

 

Truth in all counts,while I do gripe with some people here in VFDC it's a fact that this is by far the less sh!tc0ck of the fighting game communities. That being said IF Final Showdown shakes things up a bit popularity wise we can expect the mods here to be pretty busy.

 

I finally watched the video of his remarks and its pretty obvious she was uncomfortable with his remarks right from the beginning. Her forced laughter just comes off as her trying to brush it off and hoping he would stop.

I'm surprised she didn't just get up and leave considering how he just kept going and going. By the end it was obvious she was just running out of there so she didn't have to put up with him.

 

It's probably not as easy as it sounds to simply get up and leave in her situation. I agree with everything Flyingguillotine said, that's pretty much exactly what I was thinking when I watched the video. That guy seems to be a nerd of the worst kind, in a sad way.