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Riot Games made two events @ PAX West exclusive to women and non-binary folks. Chaos ensues.
- Thread starter Deleted member 5853
- Start date
Yes, if Riot isn't trying to correct the root of the issue, which is the toxic bro culture that's recently been exposed, then the events are pandering because they don't reflect the core values of the company. Instead, the events represent an attempt to improve Riot's image as a direct response to controversy.
Basically these events don't mean shit if rape jokes are still OK in Riot's internal events and documents, and if employees are still pressured to get on board with the frat boy humor described in the most recent account of the company's culture.
Sure it does, but there are plenty of avenues that offer similar presentations that are open to everyone, it's not exactly a new concept, the only distinction here is that it is aimed at getting specific under-represented groups into game development, it's an attempt to even the playing field. But that's not even what I was arguing. Look at what you wrote earlier.
How do you even enforce this? Given that this event is only 8 hours in total, do you think that it is wise to spend time on policing the attendees, is it even practical?
Seriously this cosplay thing is bizarre even by the standard concern trolling that happens with this stuff. Like, if you want to show/see a cool cosplay just go to one of the events about that?
Edit: and some of the stuff about the nature of "non-binary" in this thread reads like some extremely TERFy "ill men invading women's spaces" shit
If Riot is doing other presentations on those topics that are open to all of their fans, then that's fine. If this is the only place where Riot is touching on those topics at this convention, I think that sucks.
Don't call on men?
Thank you for making the thread. I went to the subreddit last night after the semifinal matches and had to double-check thinking I was reading KotakuInAction.
This is not about the outrage caused because they couldn't access ONE room for a few hours in an festival event catered towards them. They are not even at PAX. This is about the same disgusting GG bullshit and mentality that's everywhere in these "gamers" communities.
These are the type of posts they are upvoting:
- When Jessica Price and another developer started insulting their playerbase and being sexist on Twitter, the CEO of ArenaNet (Guild Wars 2) fired them the very day he came back from his 4th of July vacation.
- I was so proud of ANet when i saw that forum post lol. Instantly bough both expansions.
- i dont understand how we have an example of arenanet doing the right thing and immediately firing an employee for almost exactly the same thing that people like klein have been doing for years while riot has been sitting on their hands and going "well, this is fine" while everything burns around them.
- Yes this is the way to beat your own internal sexism Riot, punish people outside of the company to virtue signal.
- Some male Riot employees are sexist so what do they do for the community? They make an event to ban innocent male fans from attending. Guess Riot is aboard the SJW train now.
- This is how you kill a game, not by making it unplayable or unbalanced for a patch or two, but by going against your playerbase. What I read today in some thread, posted by actual rioters is just not okay, and I'm not even talking about twitter. I'm going to stop spending money while the situation isn't resolved, but I'm already contemplating quitting this game because now I think more about that political/gender crap than the fun I have.
They are not arguing in good faith. They never do.
By the way, in this Twitter thread Morrello (Lead Designer at Riot) explains why these types of events are important.
"Pandering to their audience"? It's the complete opposite lel
Nice post!
Just like Morello said, since the room filled up it was clearly the correct choice to keep it women/non-binary people only. Any men attending would've taken a seat away from the intended audience.
I am not specifically talking about Riot here, but I believe I saw a Tweet stating they are open to doing events that are open to all, but keep in mind, this is a company that claims to go through a significant shake-up due to an incredibly toxic work culture, I see this event as an initiative to address the toxicity, catering towards the groups people that were targets of that toxicity.
We are talking about one-on-one sessions here as well, encouraging active participation from the attendees, if you aren't explicit about who your target audience is, then how do ensure that the time and attention is reserved to the target audience and what's stopping people outside of the target audience from queuing up as well?
EDIT - Check the tweets in this post.
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Y'know, reading through stuff like this, and a lot of the Reddit comments (probably a bad idea, but I'm a glutton for punishment sometimes I guess. Anyway) and stuff and seeing the "problems" people have with this... am I the only one getting echoes of the exact same arguments that white people try to make about being able to use the n-word here? Like, it's the same exact nonsense in both cases:
"Not letting white people say the n-word only fosters more divisiveness"/"Not letting men into the event only makes things more divisive"
"You don't fight racism with more racism and not letting white people say it is itself racist"/"You don't combat exclusion with more exclusion or sexism with more sexism"
"People who think only black people should say it are the real racists"/"Riot just again proving themselves to be the real sexists and just creating more sexism"
Can't just be me seeing that, right? Like, it's all the same nonsense and greatest hits that gets tossed around there, and it's just so entirely missing the point in both cases, because in both cases they're not even interested in seeing the actual point at all. They just see the word "no" and freak out and at that point, whatever the actual point or logic or reasoning or benefit it doesn't matter whatsoever. All that matters is that they were told no, and THAT becomes what everything is about and nothing else is allowed to be discussed until that is adequately remedied in some way, actual point and benefits being completely lost and derailed, because they weren't truly interested to begin with. Just being told "no."
That aside and with that out of my system, for those who are genuinely interested in understanding what's going on here and the benefit of stuff like this, as has been linked by someone else, see Twitter threads like this one that lay out the gist and really get the benefits across here:
"Not letting white people say the n-word only fosters more divisiveness"/"Not letting men into the event only makes things more divisive"
"You don't fight racism with more racism and not letting white people say it is itself racist"/"You don't combat exclusion with more exclusion or sexism with more sexism"
"People who think only black people should say it are the real racists"/"Riot just again proving themselves to be the real sexists and just creating more sexism"
Can't just be me seeing that, right? Like, it's all the same nonsense and greatest hits that gets tossed around there, and it's just so entirely missing the point in both cases, because in both cases they're not even interested in seeing the actual point at all. They just see the word "no" and freak out and at that point, whatever the actual point or logic or reasoning or benefit it doesn't matter whatsoever. All that matters is that they were told no, and THAT becomes what everything is about and nothing else is allowed to be discussed until that is adequately remedied in some way, actual point and benefits being completely lost and derailed, because they weren't truly interested to begin with. Just being told "no."
That aside and with that out of my system, for those who are genuinely interested in understanding what's going on here and the benefit of stuff like this, as has been linked by someone else, see Twitter threads like this one that lay out the gist and really get the benefits across here:
But they at least tried. I think this is a good thing. It just turns out that this kind of stuff upsets a certain subset of gamers.
You've seen reddit right? It's a hugely impopular decision. It's the opposite of pandering.
All I can say is I hope they're making a good faith attempt to correct course. If that's what they're actually doing, then I do wish them well.
Sexism is not just a philosophical issue of differences. It translates into material losses for women that includes pay, a safe work environment, and access to resources and opportunities.
When the differences between an oppressing and oppressed group leads to material differences (and they always do), part of rectifying that issue is a transfer of those resources. In this case it means giving women and non binary folk, for a limited time, exclusive access to these resources. That's not fighting exclusion with exclusion, because you won't fix sexism in the workplace(and in general) without dedication of resources to those who are without.
You cannot claim to be for women if jump ship when anti sexism efforts materially affects your access and privilege. That's called having skin in the game.
When the differences between an oppressing and oppressed group leads to material differences (and they always do), part of rectifying that issue is a transfer of those resources. In this case it means giving women and non binary folk, for a limited time, exclusive access to these resources. That's not fighting exclusion with exclusion, because you won't fix sexism in the workplace(and in general) without dedication of resources to those who are without.
You cannot claim to be for women if jump ship when anti sexism efforts materially affects your access and privilege. That's called having skin in the game.
Those Twitter quotes hit the nail on the head. A lot of people here need to stop stoping the same bullshit talking points about male "exclusion" and do a better job of understanding the issue.
True, that's how reddit works. The majority sentiment on the subreddit is that, though. Even outside the subreddit, gaming culture in general isn't very good at being inclusive for women and nonbinary people. League community isn't the worst one, but it's not on the list of better communities, I think.
Hopefully they do, yes. They need to change their workplace culture in addition to efforts like this.
Like I said in the last locked thread about this:
Get the fuck over yourself. Millionaires don't get food stamps either, boo fucking hoo.
Shitty false comparison to what happened with ArenaNet.
If this had been an HR dude talking about how hard it is to hire women, then declaring it might actually be impossible, a female fan replied saying it was an interesting topic but giving some thoughts and suggestions, and he'd then replied with "STFU bitch, I'm A PROFESSIONAL RECRUITER" then later retweeted her reply out of context with a "This is the nagging bullshit I have to put up with from tumblerinas #feminazis #essjaydubyas" that would be comparable.
Riot games said:
Gamers said:
Get the fuck over yourself. Millionaires don't get food stamps either, boo fucking hoo.
Shitty false comparison to what happened with ArenaNet.
If this had been an HR dude talking about how hard it is to hire women, then declaring it might actually be impossible, a female fan replied saying it was an interesting topic but giving some thoughts and suggestions, and he'd then replied with "STFU bitch, I'm A PROFESSIONAL RECRUITER" then later retweeted her reply out of context with a "This is the nagging bullshit I have to put up with from tumblerinas #feminazis #essjaydubyas" that would be comparable.
I think the exclusive gaming events and whatnot are fine, but a panel on diversity? If anything, I think men need to be in that one. Good on Riot for sticking to their guns though, hopefully this brings a healthier attitude to their scene in the long run
EDIT: re-read, so it's not really diversity stuff but help getting into the industry/Riot, focused on wm/nb. Yeah they can leave men out of this. Manbabies gonna manbaby
EDIT: re-read, so it's not really diversity stuff but help getting into the industry/Riot, focused on wm/nb. Yeah they can leave men out of this. Manbabies gonna manbaby
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I agree with you, but reaching out to female and non-binary developers and designers in order to hire them might be a (small) step towards changing that culture.
And I don't trust Riot. They've proved time and time again they're a shitty company regarding these issues, but maybe they are willing to change.
The article could be PR drivel (and the cynical part of me thinks that's the most likely outcome) but I hope yesterday's event is really the first step forward, especially after reading that last paragraph I've quoted.
Thanks ^-^
Providing a safe and inclusive environment for excluded folks isn't exclusion.
How would you know what is effective in combating exclusion ?
The truth is this is how you do it. Generally the type of people who complain about this are generally the privileged.
I'm massively disappointed to see this kind of awful logic on era. If people aren't atrending events for fear of harassment, attempting to fix the problem by creating sub events dedicated to their concerns where harassment is massively less likely is a valid first step. You can't have a functional event targeting women at a gaming convention if most of the attendees are guys saying "i don't believe your negative experiences happened but if they did you deserved them," which is how 90% of internet conversations on harassment or sexism go. "No seriously assholes, sexism is real" would be a different event entirely. Yes toxic attitudes om sex and gender really are so common that intermediate steps are needed and if they took the strategy of "let everyone in and kick people out as they prove themselves too immature to function in that setting" then the entire event would just be dealing with that.
Pointing out the lasting effects of long-term bigotry and exerting effort to compensate for the accumulated generations of bullshit is how you fix that institutional discrimination. This isn't combating exclusion with exclusion.it's combating neglect, fear, and exclusion with a safe space and paying attention to people. The equivalent event for every dude there was the rest of the event overall. Being upset about this is like going "how come there's no white history month?" Or "fuck labor day, when's rich guy day?"
Riot's internal cesspool of workplace culture is a separate problem.
I don't see the issue. At least a all Womans league tournament will not have a bunch of creeper dudes. I feel like a lot of league players are, yes specifically men.
The community can be quite toxic, so manbabies serms like the right word. I never played the game myself. But I read articles, seens games to understand enough.
This should happen more often imo, but there are always closet sexist
The community can be quite toxic, so manbabies serms like the right word. I never played the game myself. But I read articles, seens games to understand enough.
This should happen more often imo, but there are always closet sexist
A large-scale multi-day games industry event had a room, A ROOM!, set up for underrepresented groups in the industry.
I swear a lot of these guys would sit in the kids playroom at their local restaurant demanding not to be excluded.
I swear a lot of these guys would sit in the kids playroom at their local restaurant demanding not to be excluded.
Had the same shit said when a few cinema chains did a few black people only screenings for Black Panther
one of these days reddit will discover our agency makes exclusive events towards minorities to collect data for advertising
imagine the horror when they realize we're not asking for their white male opinion on our researches about the shopping habits of young PoC LGBT communities!
SNAFU? Are you for real? If men aren't allowed in, then it's wrong? No wonder you're glad Reddit is on your side.
There is nothing wrong in general with having events and panels that are women-only or nonbinary-only. Sorry, men. Not everything is for you.
I think this particular instance of doing that, though, was poorly handled. But this isn't an example of Riot being sexist. It's just an example of them being short-sighted and reactionary.
I think this particular instance of doing that, though, was poorly handled. But this isn't an example of Riot being sexist. It's just an example of them being short-sighted and reactionary.
This is about a career session with Riot employees about things like resumé checking and career advice, not an "all womens league tournament".
"All female gaming clans" have a long history of being a joke put together by marketing people and the infamous Team Siren in league is no different.
These guys should stop wondering why they cry when they masturbate and instead ask themselves why they are so angry and reactive. Personally don't think that was Riots best idea but those takes are embarrassing and shows the victim complex these guys have built up
The safe and inclusive environment for one group is created by excluding another group
Don't know how you can say it ain't when it clearly is.
Okay, let me ELI5 this for you;
yes, saying men can't go to a dedicated career advice seminar is unfair. It is a small unfairness, specifically intended to address a bigger unfairness, that - for whatever reason - it is harder for a woman or non-binary person to get into that job in the first place, so they are being given more help to try and address that.
Its like taxes.
Rich people pay more taxes than poor people do.
and yes, that is unfair.
On a very small level, because rich people having a ton more money than poor people do is unfair on a much larger scale.
Can you really not understand this?
Mainstream society is essentially a massive safe space for white cishet men... I don't really see the problem in wanting safe spaces for marginalized folks too.
It's not a question of whether it's excluding another group. It certainly is.
The question is whether that excluded group has the right to be included in everything by default. And no, they don't.
Exclusion is not always a bad thing.
Its is completely wrong to be thinking of it in terms of exclusion.
It is an assistance that is only being made available to people that need it.
People who can walk don't need free wheelchairs, and they don't get them. They're not being excluded.
Complaining about "Hey, how come those dudes get free wheelchairs and I don't?" is what people are doing here.
Im glad Riot did an event like that.
And reddit showed their ass in a grand way over this. If you read the shit they said in the topics pertaining PAX, you would think youre reading on an incel forum.
And Im disappointed that there are people spewing that rhetoric on here. "Wow excluding a whole group? Not a good look riot!!!" Like seriously, get the hell outta here. Its obvious some people dont understand why stuff like this is needed.
And reddit showed their ass in a grand way over this. If you read the shit they said in the topics pertaining PAX, you would think youre reading on an incel forum.
And Im disappointed that there are people spewing that rhetoric on here. "Wow excluding a whole group? Not a good look riot!!!" Like seriously, get the hell outta here. Its obvious some people dont understand why stuff like this is needed.
You're lost and haven't spent much time thinking about what is actually going on or understand the purpose of what they were doing.
I understand. I just wish people that support this were honest about what it is instead of being all "It's not exclusion"
but i want a free wheelchair too! it's not fair
i'll keep thinking about how unfair this world is the whole day when i leave and go to all the other places that have shitty accessibility for disabled people
Heh. Gaters getting offended by appeals to diversity and equality. Keep digging your grave, EWBs(entitled white boys).