@elaine You think that’s bad. You should see the male on male abuse. Don’t know how many times I have received online abuse from other gamers when you beat them. I’m not easily offended so I take it in good stride. Its great crack beating people online & they get all wound up LOL.

At least you don’t get pictures of other males bits and pieces though Graham, with obnoxious messages of rape. I know what messages other males get, I have male friends, male or female it’s not ok.

Wow yeah that’s too much. I don’t understand morons who do that. I’ll just send a pic of my knob to some random woman on the internet. Yeah she will definitely like that. Idiots. Did you report them for it?

Yeah I have through the xbox itself and emailing xbox support but to be honest I don’t think it’s taken very seriously, it’s happened a good few times to me. I’m 28 so I can let it over my head even when the messages are frightening but I do pity younger girls and boys who no doubt receive messages of that nature. I just hope parents are savvy enough to monitor contact that’s been made to kids on xbox live like their childrens activity on the computer.

That’s exactly what I was thinking. They don’t know what age the people they are sending the pics to are. Just block & report them I suppose. Your right Xbox probably don’t do a whole lot about it. I guess I’m lucky not to get them kind of pics from weirdos

But then again parents buy their children games that are over 15s or over 18s and they play those games online. You wouldn’t let your young kid watch a film with those age certs so why some let their kid play a game with the same cert? Gaming safety and responsibility should be thought to parents. haha this has gone off topic slightly. :)

Yeah parents definitely need to take more responsibility with the kind of games they get their kids. But also they could be mammy & daddies games that the kids are putting on when the parents are away. Your right this has gone off topic slightly. We need to finish this conversation over coffee :-)

I don’t see online hostility towards women everyday.

I see hostility to both men and women online.

The link is that anonymity is common to the three. In a gaming environment, the sexist attitude can go unpunished and the same anonymity exists in youtube and probably to a greater extent in reddit, where throwaway accounts are even more common again.

As a generalised statement, I personally think this is a pretty useful study. Obviously people who openly abuse others online are losers but to gather evidence that they are worse at games which involve strategy is pretty interesting.

Halo might seem a simple point and click shooter, but better players are predictive & strategic. Proving that sexist flamers are effectively dumber at the games is an interesting statement.

Fozz, these two claims are pretty different.

The research shows that gamers tend to be more negative towards women when they have a *bad kill/death ratio* on a *videogame*. That’s it.

You’re not able to conclude from that limited knowledge that the same thing happens on social media sites, seeing as videogames and social media are fundamentally different environments (one being predominantly male, for one).

In what way can someone “do badly” on a social media site like they can on a scoreboard for a video game? They’re completely separate discussions.

It is interesting. I hope this insight can be used to help curb antisocial behaviour online.

Ciarán, you’re misinterpreting what the study actually found. It doesn’t show that the people who were ‘harassing’ (this is unclear – it says negative behaviour) women were worse at the game.

It may be the case that because the players were doing badly, they decided to take their anger out on the women they heard on voice chat. This doesn’t mean that they are actually worse at the game. The study is actually pretty careful not to explicitly claim that this is the case.

@Scarr. Exactly. I doubt the same eejits propose a toast to their opponents success when they loose to a male.

@malachi video games are anonymous social mediums too. If you want examples or the sort of vicious sexual aggressive abuse that you hear about being directed at celebs on twitter etc, check out the origins of the “Gamergate” scandal too.

Gaming may be male dominated, but aggressive sexism is a big issue there too.

Establishing and assigning traits to those who commit such abuses is the first step towards eradicating it.

The lessons which can be learned across such massive sample sizes can prove invaluable in fighting online abuse on all mediums. There’s a generation of kids coming who need to be taught how to interact on the Internet and we need the tools to direct the teachings.

Gamergate was to do with ethcial standards in video game journalism. Any harassment stemming from it was irrelevant to the goals of the movement and was condemned by those in the movement wherever it sprang up. Not relevant to what we’re discussing.

Woah, you say “massive sample sizes”? I don’t know if you’ve read many of these research papers but 160 odd games with 1-3 participants in each game is certainly NOT large. It is actually quite small for a study of this type.

Malachi, in halo, negative behaviour on voice comms can only really be in the form of harassment.

And sample of 189 incidents, ok, not massive, but certainly statistically significant.

Gamergate technically originated as journalistic ethics, but to claim that what happened there was related to journalistic ethics would in my opinion be grossly misguided. I wouldn’t dare claim that it was anything other than a shameful example of grotesque sexism.

Not true Ciarán. They never defined ‘negative’. It could simply be criticism, say “you should’ve killed him!” or “how did you lose the flag?!”, and I wouldn’t call that harassment. That would degrade and diminish actual harassment that is far more extreme.

186 participants is so-so. It shows a correlation, sure. But it really isn’t enough to making sweeping generalisations about.

Gamergate was about ethics in game journalism, and if you don’t accept then you’re just ignoring the facts. The movement resulted in multiple gaming websites *changing their ethics policies*. How exactly does a movement that just harasses women online get those kind of major results? I think it’s shallow to ignore the improvements the movement has made to the gaming industry.

Gamergate started as ethics and resulted in a debate, but more importantly it lead to significant harassment and abuse, specifically of females in the industry and highlighted the severe levels of sexism prevalent in gaming.

To ignore that and claim it was about ethics only is just…. unethical. In my opinion it’s to ignore the bigger issue.

As for negative, the severity isn’t relevant so long as a difference was identified.

Gamergate was a setup and no threat was made , she did it all for publicity. That yoke will say anything for attention. Gave out about violent games yet in picture’s of her game collection has dozens of violent games. She’s a hypocrite a fraud, and a clown.