Meet the sexist, racist pigs of Capcom's fighting-game reality show

At Penny Arcade Report, Ben Kuchera reports on Cross Assault. A "fighting game" reality show sponsored by Capcom, creator of the classic Street Fighter game series, it was a disaster of sexual harassment, casual racism and adolescent nastiness.

Aris Bakhtanians, the coach of the Tekken team ... stated that sexual harassment and the fighting game community are “one and the same thing.”

“The sexual harassment is part of the culture. If you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community… it doesn’t make sense to have that attitude. These things have been established for years,” Aris stated. He then noted that ... it’s unfair for anyone to tell fighting game fans they can’t viciously mock women.

“That’s what you’re trying to do to the fighting game community and it’s not right,” Aris continued. “It’s ethically wrong.” This may be the first time in the history of video games that someone had said that removing sexual harassment is ethically unjust.

The Street Fighter series is a world tour of crude national and ethnic stereotypes to beat up—what exactly do we expect? The really insane thing is Capcom's cluelessness trying to sell the ass end of gaming culture as television.

Sexual harassment as ethical imperative: how Capcom’s fighting game reality show turned ugly [Penny Arcade Report]

• [Ben Ahmady]

  … what?

• [Halloween_Jack]

  Penny Arcade, huh? They ever apologize for the whole Dickwolves thing? 

  • [Crashproof]

    Not sincerely.  They apologized in a way that very clearly said “anyone who thinks we have to apologize is stupid.”

    • [Hobozombie]

      Which I’m kind of OK with. Because the problems that people brought up were kind of stupid.

      • [Cefeida]

        Initially, perhaps. But the way PA reacted to that response was not so much as a shot in the foot as a double amputation.

        • [Hobozombie]

          The straw man argument in their response comic? 

          I thought that was the only response Gabe and Tycho gave, though it’s entirely possible that I’m incorrect.

          EDIT: Just to make my position on Aris clear, that guy is a real douchebucket.

        • [James]

           Hmm. Can’t reply directly to Hobozombie for some reason.

          Anyway, yes. There was a whole thing:
          http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline

          They’d have saved themselves a lot of time if they’d just linked directly to Steve Hughes’ skit about being offended.

        • [Hobozombie]

          I can’t reply to me either! WHY WON’T I LISTEN?

          But anyway, many thanks James for the link, thats my afternoon gone.

        • [Cefeida]

          Ha, this faulty nesting proves that I am open to discussion while Hobozombie is stubborn and close-minded :P

          Seriously though, I never equated your position on the Penny Arcade thing with an approval of Aris’s behaviour :) I wonder what you’ll think of it all once you’ve read the link. When I first heard of the Dickwolf story it was he said she said (I don’t read PA much) and thought, someone’s throwing a hissy fit about badly executed black humour. Then I followed it through response by response and changed my mind- my final opinion on PA’s behaviour is that they followed up a clumsy mistake by acting like insensitive, sexist douchebags.

          Incidentally, there’s a brouhaha going on in France right now, where a webcomic artist who specialises in very dark, often tasteless humour, has had his equipment confiscated by the police in an investigation. He got it back but was ordered to remove several strips from his website. The strip that started all this depicted a teacher seemingly chastising children in the playground for talking about showing each other their privates for money, but the final panel made it clear that the teacher was outraged about the prices, and had just raped a little girl (and paid her accordingly). 
          (he talks about this on his blog, I couldn’t find an english link, sorry. http://piratesourcil.blogspot.com/2012/02/une-histoire-de-censure-suite-et-fin.html )

          To me, it’s always been clear that his strips, while absolutely appalling in subject, are a dark and perhaps necessary commentary on the reality of life which most of us prefer to ignore. But to others, this was a joke which trivialised child rape and catered to a pedophile community’s supposed sense of humour.

          In other words, that line, it’s a very very fine line, and those who play alongside it should be prepared to accidentally stumble over it at some point- and then to recognise their mis-step and apologise for it.

        • [Another_Hobozombie]

          “To me, it’s always been clear that his strips, while absolutely appalling in subject, are a dark and perhaps necessary commentary on the reality of life which most of us prefer to ignore. But to others, this was a joke which trivialised child rape and catered to a pedophile community’s supposed sense of humour.”  - Excellent, excellent point. My personal belief is that commentary like this is always necessary, and should an individual be offended then they have every right to complain but the creator should not be 
          To be honest, after reading through the thoroughly entertaining story in full I have to agree that Mike Krahulik’s response was less than stellar, and the response from elements of Penny Arcade’s fan base was utterly disgusting, but I still have issues with the original blog post on Shakesville. I know that they claim any joke involving rape contributes to rape culture, but I feel differently. Does this mean that jokes involving violence contribute to violent culture? Is the classic physical comedy of a man being hit square in the nuts is partly responsible for a culture of violence? Some most certainly do, such as the “Snoo-Snoo” episode of Futurama, the rape jokes there were certainly in bad taste and misrepresented rape as much as having individuals quietly enjoy it. The fact that the men were being raped changes nothing. However, the dickwolves joke uses rape as an (albeit very extreme) example of a horrible thing to happen to someone. Now this next statement can work for both sides of the argument, I think the joke could have been as funny with some other act replacing rape. Not that I feel they should not have used the word rape, its emotive and fitted perfectly with the cadence of the sentence See, even while writing about this I’m still not sure of my own mind, which is fine and fun, but maybe I have a lingering dislike of Shakesville ever since the problems they had with the game Fat Princess. Long story short, everything after the initial comic from PA and blog post from Shakes was embarrassing for everyone involved. But some people, me included, believe that everything, ever can be somehow funny, whether the laugher is coming from comedy or tragedy. Others do not.And in my opinion neither camp should restrict the other.  

          EDIT: And yes it was a mistake posting this from another profile, but I tried to make a comment on Shakes blog, was promptly banned and started another profile to comment again because I am a glutton for punishment.

        • [Cefeida]

          Good points, new hobozombie. I appreciate this calm discussion.

          However, I will say that the onus to keep a balance is more on the one who makes the potentially offensive jokes than those who may be offended. Dark humour works because it touches on subjects that are not normally a laughing matter, and leaves us feeling a little bit sick once we finish laughing, so those who use it can’t claim they didn’t expect anyone to be offended. 

          And when people get offended they usually get upset as well, and defensive, because they’re challenging something that someone already decided wasn’t too awful to publish. In a way, they feel like their feelings have already been mocked. So, you know what happens when someone who’s upset, defensive, and feels mocked writes a complaint…

          And yet, this is where the author of the original joke should always be prepared to take the high road. Because they’re the one pushing the limits. There’s a valid complaint somewhere in that Shakesville post, and not an unexpected one, either.

          PA’s response felt like they had been prepared for a backlash and decided ahead of time that they wouldn’t acknowledge offended people, but would mock them instead.  And they just kept going with that. 

        • [Hobozombie]

          I can’t say you’re wrong on any of the points you make, and I have to agree that PA’s response was unfounded (Though when I say PA I mainly mean Mike). Also, sensible calm discussion with no one calling anyone else Hitler is why I love BoingBoing.

          However, I may be missing the main point of shake’s post. From my reading of Shakes (well not shakes herself but a guest blogger, but you know what I’m getting at) original response to the comic, it looks like she wants no one to ever make any jokes that involve rape, even tangentially and that to make such jokes is inherently wrong as that may result in a “Trigger Moment”.

          My big issue is, if every trigger moment needs a warning, the internet will be all warning no substance.

          Lets swap rape for stab, the joke still works. However, I have a close friend who was stabbed and as a result spends a considerable amount of time in hospital even today years after the event. Now if he had complained about the reference to stabbing, that it was a “trigger moment” for him, would he have a valid complaint? Would the complaint have been as valid as the one on shakes blog? 

          Now as stated above, I  agree that the response from PA was stupid and in my opinion the very best thing they could have done is completely ignore the article. No apology, no comic removal, just completely ignore it and allow everyone to hold their own opinions about the comic and choose whether or not to view it again. But then I’m a big fan of “edgy” (I hate the term) comics like Louis CK, Doug Stanhope, David Mitchell and the dear departed Bill Hicks (not Joe Rogan though, NEVER Joe Rogan) so maybe my offence-o-meter is out of whack. But it just seems like rape is being put on a pedestal (never thought I’d write that) above any other crime, from murder to paedophilia and I feel like the only reason it is, is because it is the subject closest to the hearts of the bloggers and comments on shakesville.  It seems to me like a classic case of not caring about offensive humour until it offends you personally. Not you of course, them. 

          So, the comic does not make them dicks, but acting like dicks in defence of the comic does. In short I don’t think that the point made about rape on shakesville is invalid, on the contrary, I feel its the same as complaining about jokes that involve violence, paedophilia and bestiality and deserves to be treated in the same way.

          However in my personal opinion, I’m OK with jokes about all of those subjects. I know that not everyone will agree, but that’s the point, they are completely free to air their opinion too. I just might not modify my behaviour because of it.

          And just to reiterate, Aris = knobber.

        • [Cefeida]

          Huh. I agree with everything you just said. I guess that means we have to stop :(

  • [olrac57]

    This is my first time hearing of this dickwolves controversy. I’m a bit confused, though. Was the comic strip ripped off or something? I just see a mildly humorous comic strip. Is it another case of people being sensitive and not understanding that humor is absolute?

    • [L_Mariachi]

      Briefly, some people saw the word “rape” used in a humorous strip and automatically took that to mean that PA was making a joke at the expense of rape victims, ignoring, among other things, the fact that the joke was clearly at the expense of the of the “hero.”

      Personally, I get upset that popular movies and network sitcoms still think prison rape is funny (“don’t drop the soap!” etc.) But prison rape is a real thing — there’s no such thing as a dickwolf.

      • [Ceronomus]

         I think that you have totally categorized the issue. One person complained about a strip, and even stated that they didn’t have reasonable feelings on the issue…being a rape victim will certainly take the “humor” out of rape.

        PA could’ve just done nothing actually. Instead, they behaved like pricks. THAT is when lots of people got upset.

• [Nathan Hornby]

  I hate listening to racist, sexist pigs try to justify their actions.  So much self-denial and cluelessness.

  That immortal line: “it’s only a joke”.  Yes, it’s a joke founded in racist/sexist beliefs.  That kind of behavior only becomes vaguely acceptable when used ironically – there’s nothing ironic about repeatedly calling a female gamer ON YOUR SIDE a bitch – that’s just rude and offensive, plain and simple.

  The fact that these people don’t realise this, and attempt to defend it as free speech is shocking – claims that institutionalised bullying is simply ‘part of the community’ is quite frankly baffling.  Sexually abusing someone who’s playing a video game is pathetic; there’s no debate here pal.

  I’m most interested in why more people aren’t calling him out on this.  If I’m playing a video game and there’s some emotionally underdeveloped moron spouting offensive shit (normally racial or homophobic) then I’m the first to tell them to shut their pie-hole.

  Also the way that some of this community is defending this mans words is troubling – I guess many of the stereotypes about gamers being sexually repressed teenage boys is true.  Shame for all the normal people involved though that just want to play video games.

  • [ocker3]

     From the final sentences of that report, it’s pretty bleeding obvious why Aris et al make such horrible comments, especially to women players. It’s a psychological ploy to make themselves bigger, and their opponent smaller. If you can crush someoone’s will to fight, you’ve already won. Which is really the tactics of an arsehole in this kind of situation. I Love winning games, but I enjoy the rush the most when I know I outplayed my opponent, not when I’ve out-sledged them.

  • [Cefeida]

    You know what would be nice? A world in which stuff like that was really just a stupid joke, just tasteless humour instead of the reinforcement of an actual way of thinking.

    :(

  • [Sign Ahead]

    To me, the proper response to “it’s only a joke” is “Great! Then you won’t mind apologizing and never repeating it again.”

  • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

    The problem is actually that A LOT of people IN THE COMMUNITY are calling him out on this repeatedly, but people are too concerned and fascinated by the whirlwind of negative media hype to actually give a crap.

  • [bumpngrindcore]

    He’s getting all manner of heat on all the gaming sites I’m on.
    He’ll probably never live it down.

• [Crashproof]

  I don’t understand the entire console gaming culture.  Or rather, the racist/misogynist/homophobic/uber-offensive voice chat culture of console gaming (and its relatively small trickle into MMOs) or why it is allowed to persist.
  As a gamer (yes, mostly a PC gamer, and mostly single player largely to avoid shit like this) I really do not want to be associated with these idiots.

  I have never been treated disrespectfully in an arcade, and I used to hang around in them quite a bit.  The “nobody likes you” line is frankly a lie, or a projection.

  • [SomeGuyNamedMark]

    Took the words right out of my mouth.

    I prefer single player games too with the whole emotionally stunted players being a part of it (the lack of time is the other).  I somehow managed to play MMOs without having to resort to trash talk (the other favorite is to scream “retard” at everyone who makes a mistake) and even gave out the occasional compliment (gasp!).  I miss the fun of a good-natured and coordinated group but I don’t miss the inevitable Ventrillo rants.

• [joreyadan swayeri]

  This is endemic to almost every video game community extant. I’m not sure why so many go to such great length to maintain the “sausage factory”, but (as a straight man and a human being) it’s fucking terrible.

  Maybe this is a long-term consequence of gender segregated sports?

  • [Mantissa128]

     You might be on to something there. A similar claim is made about violence in hockey, that it is essential to the game, somehow.

    • [Cefeida]

      Tradition is always a powerful argument, I think maybe the hardest to fight with. Ever heard someone say ‘Back in the day where men were real men and women had class’?  

      No one ever thinks they’re defending a time when men and women were constrained into sexist definitions when they say wax nostalgic about that. 

  • [SomeGuyNamedMark]

     I think it has more to do with people of a like mind seeking each other out.  If you like to be abusive (or receive it) you join these communities.

    • [nachoproblem]

       Bingo. (I think.)

• [L_Mariachi]

  It’s worth pointing out that at least on the PAR forum, some 95% of the posters are explicitly not defending Aris, and asking that their community please not be judged by his behaviour.  Another maybe 3% are saying “Yeah, he’s an asshole and those were shitty things to do and say, but…” and then quibbling with some minor detail. It’s a minuscule fraction defending bullying and sexual harassment.

  (I didn’t follow this story to other forums more specifically geared towards the fighting game scene so things may be different there, but the PAR posters seemed by and large to be knowledgeable about it.)

• [koko szanel]

  wait, there is a reality show  based on Street Fighter? with sexual harrasment?  SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

  • [koko szanel]

    Just watched linked YT clip. WOW, just wow that was terrible. I take my previous comment back.
    I was expecting funny “girls cant fight lol, back to the kitchen” type of thing. Instead we get Aris Bakhtanians, fat looser with no face all excited he has a girl near him. In his head acting like 4th grader  is considered flirting.

    sad, had to stop the clip, it was too much. Amazing that the girl managed 5 days of this before she quit.

    • [BlankUMDsForSale]

      actually it happened on the first two days, then never again.  

• [Snig]

  It’s funny that in the actual fighting world of martial artists, people are often polite, supportive and kind to each other. 

  • [HahTse]

     Yes, because if you’re not, you’re in for a world of pain (literally).

    And all that “respect your opponent”-stuff that get’s drilled into you from the beginning.

    (Which is a good thing, or it would be way to dangerous to practise martial arts)

    • [Snig]

       Well, yes, of course we beat up those that are impolite, unsupportive or unkind, but that’s the whole point of learning martial arts. 

      • [BlankUMDsForSale]

        I thought the purpose of learning martial arts was to tell people you are a black belt and take the chance that they’ll be intimidated, instead of them subverting all your knowledge by just swinging wildly at you.

        • [Snig]

           In self defense situations, the last thing you should say is “I’m a black belt”.  You should instead bug out your eyes, act twitchy and scream “They’re coming to kill the prophet! They’re coming to kill the prophet!”.  You tend to get left alone. 

• [Jose A. Gomez]

  That guy should get a kick in the face. 

  But you guys are feeding it. 

  Maybe I’m stating something obvious, but I’ve seen boingboing writers and commenters supporting South Park. Isn’t South Park full of racist and sexist jokes??

  How come South Park gets a free-speech-dont-watch-it-if-you-dont-like-it treatment but this show doesn’t? 

  If the target audience was offended by this and it had terrible ratings then the producers would have to think twice about approving that kind of behavior on the show. 

  But by having this pointless discussion all over the web you are all making it a real hit as a show! After all, now a huge amount of people are seeing it and frankly…seing how kick ass  Street Fighter vs. Tekken looks.

  On a Capcom sponsored show…

  Brillant advertising.

  • [Brandon F]

    Is the case of South Park everyone knows what they are getting in to when they watch the show.  If you don’t like it don’t watch it.

    For Cross Assault “Super Yan” didn’t sign up to be belittled with questions like “What does she smell like?” and “What’s her bra size?” and demands like “Stop covering your breasts, the stream wants to see them.”  She signed up to try to win and show her worth to the fighting game community.  There’s no reason she should have to put up with the idiocy she saw and I agree that she had grounds to leave and make a big stink about the way she was treated.

    • [Jose A. Gomez]

      If she didn’t signed up for that then she was fooled and maybe needs to sue the producers.

      But everyone need to stop discussing this as if it was REAL. It’s a reality SHOW. 

      And yeah, the show might make you want to puke, but they are not selling the show…

      They are selling the game.

      And the game still looks great. 

    • [Quiche de Resistance]

      “What does she smell like?” could be an honest question, perhaps having never been close enough to smell a female.

  • [puppybeard]

    This isn’t the same as South Park characters being offensive. They’re fictional characters.

    If the South Park staff harassed an intern to the point where they quit, that would be equivalent. Then it would be real people.

    I can’t speak for anyone else, but this puts me off the idea of watching the beat-em-up show, it doesn’t entice me.

  • [Brainspore]

    How come South Park gets a free-speech-dont-watch-it-if-you-dont-like-it treatment but this show doesn’t?

    1. South Park is often funny.
    2. Much of the crude humor can be reasonably described as “satire” without having to roll one’s eyes when saying the word.
    2. South Park is an equal-opportunity offender. The show is at least as likely to target misogynists as feminists, as likely to mock racism as to make a racist joke.
    3. The offensive content of the show is its entire reason for existing. Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t claim that offensive language, content and stereotypes are critical ingredients for any animated sitcom, just things that are part of THEIR animated sitcom. They also don’t go around acting like Cartman in real life.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Isn’t South Park full of racist and sexist jokes??

    Do you not get the difference between mocking something and engaging in it? South Park does it to highlight the existence of the problems.

    • [Marc45]

      “South Park does it to highlight the existence of the problems.”
      You’ve got to be kidding me!  They do it because they get viewers, pure and simple.
      They would violently kill Kenny on the show if it would get more laughs…oh wait…

    • [LogrusZed]

      Southpark isn’t really a perfect example of taking the piss out of racism or rape-culture. Sure they have showed some great insight over the years but they have also failed enough times (although I won’t speculate as to their motives re: money).

      This is the problem with holding up any entity as a good-dooer rather than an act as a good-deed. On close enough examination any person or group of persons fucks up, but fanboy/girl behavior gets in the way of this kind of examination by encouraging those in defense of a thing or a group to react to criticisms without looking to legitimacy of the critique by pointing to individual examples of something generally viewed as a good thing.

      “Your individual example of a bad thing is invalidated by my individual example of a good thing! Therefore your argument null!”

      I think this anti-reductionism fosters an overly simplified approach to examining the world we share and a hostility to people who want to try and legitimately critique things they have an interest in.

    • [Jose A. Gomez]

      And that is why South Park is a great show and this reality show is…crap (specially for those of us who aren’t interested in watching SFvsTekken fights)

      But dont freak out like an old lady! Every time we defend the right of shows like South Park to exist we end up using the just change the channel if you dont get it argument. So why shouldn’t that apply here? Do you expect some kind of regulation deciding what sexist insult is considered satire and whats a plain insult?

      Dont we know that in order to have free speech we’ll sometimes have to listen to things we dont really agree with?

      The only “reprehension” that should exists in this case is that no one should watch that show. I’m sure the producers then would demand that asshole to be more polite (or at least decent). 

      But this kind of articles all they do is actually reward the producers with tons of people getting knowledge of the game they want to sell!

      That’s the whole point of the show, and that’s why this shows keep getting produced.

      Oh..and the generalization…do you watch the Real Housewives and conclude that all wives are crazy, violent and vulgar?

      This is one guy making reality show drama, it’s nothing new and it will only cease to exist if we just stop making this kind of articles.

• [desdinova]

   I think you fail to see the difference between sexism and satire.

  • [TheMudshark]

    I guess you haven´t read the article or watched the video. It´s not about in-game sexism and racism, which may be interpreted as satire, but about very tangible harassment of female players on this reality show.

    Edit: Was this a reply to Jose A. Gomez? From the nesting of the comments it doesn´t seem that way. If it was, ignore my reply.

    • [chgoliz]

      I think desdinova is referring to South Park being a satirical show.

      (If I’m wrong….then never mind.)

      • [Cefeida]

        That’s what I thought, too…a misclick?

        • [Rob Beschizza]

          Could be! He can edit to fix if so

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    Read posts before commenting on them.

    • [Snig]

       We waste enough time commenting, we can’t be expected to read what we’re commenting on as well. 

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      Read posts before commenting on them.

      Hey, that’s not in the comment policy! That’s not fair to make up new rules like that!*

      *Yes, I’ve really had people make that complaint.

• [Mr_Smooth]

  Supposed adults who spend their days playing video games have the social skills of 12-year olds? I am shocked, shocked.

  • [cinerik]

    Yes, in exactly the same way that adults who play tennis, cricket etc never grow up and should be derided for their choice of activity. Hello, what are architects but adults playing Lego…

  • [adonai]

     That particular attitude….doesn’t help. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about gamers, it’s that if they or their hobby is attacked en masse, they’re more likely to circle the wagons *around* the source of criticism rather than looking critically at it.

• [Ceronomus]

  This is pretty much what I have come to expect from video-game culture. How is this news? The parents of these people completely failed to raise human beings, instead raising feral little monsters who make rape jokes.

  Color me surprised.

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    Video game culture at large is not at all like this.

    • [Ceronomus]

      You seriously believe that? Every time I turn around and encounter people who are more than casual gamers, this is exactly the sort of thing that I see. Are there folks in Video Game culture who aren’t like this? Sure, but my experience is that they are the minority.

      If they are the majority, then they need to stand up and do something about it.

      • [PhantomPeanut]

        I’ve been gaming for pretty much since I was 5. And in those years I played with decent people. Some were kind of jerks but it never got nearly as fucked up as this article. Most of the gaming community I roamed in were fairly decent folk. It wasn’t until hitting Xbox live that I really ran into the real seedy side that sadly most get exposed to these days. It really gives the community et al a bad name simply because thats the shit people mention when talking about it. 

        I ended up quitting Xbox live due to the amounts of crazy stalker messages and death threats. It just stopped being a fun way to unwind. But overall its really a smaller segment of the community giving everyone a bad rap. I recoiled from it myself and retreated to PSN and steam, mostly single player, though when I do multiplayer, people are generally not so bad. 

        Fighting game communities are some of the worst offenders, for every decent player who trash talks but doesn’t go too overboard you get 15 people describing how they are going to rape my wife or mother. 

        I for one stand up and speak for myself. I wish more of us stood up and really expressed how not cool sexism and racism is. It ruins the enjoyment of just sitting down after a day of work looking to unwind. There are many out there who are even headed and not dicks. A majority even. Just not nearly as vocal and its a damn shame really.

        Side note: It’s weird that my old avatar pic shows up from months ago on here. Any way to fix that?

        • [SumAnon]

          I’ve had a very similar experience, as well. I used to play quite at bit before college, both at home and in arcades, but once I got to Uni it exploded.  I was playing with dorm mates and friends almost every day, in just about every genre of game out there. When I moved abroad, it was one of the ways I stayed in touch with people back home.

          But I’ve dropped out now, even though I love so many of the online multiplayer games. It got so bad (even on Steam games like TF2) that I couldn’t play with a headset because
          as soon as I opened my mouth, the sexist attacks would start. The relaxation and fun of it was completely stolen from any kind of uncontrolled/open play game. I know I’ve been essentially bullied out of what used to be a favorite pastime, but it became so exhausting defending my gender from idiots.

      • [Rob Beschizza]

        Yep!

        • [Ceronomus]

           Sorry man, but I’ve NEVER seen that side as more than a minority, a small one at that. The fighting game scene has always been dominated by loud-mouthed, crass, assholes. If they ARE a minority, and hey…my experiences may not be typical, then the real majority need to stand up and stop tolerating this crap.

        • [Rob Beschizza]

          Right, people in the *fighting game* scene are like that. But that’s a small corner of video game culture at large.

        • [Ceronomus]

          Ah, I see your point.

      • [tros]

         Why isn’t the “casual gamer culture” the same thing as “video game culture at large”?

        In my experience (which omits Grand Theft Auto, oops), most games tend to dissuade from sexual harassment, and promote respect for both genders.
        E.G.:
        Portal+ Portal 2: which features a strong female protagonist.
        Left 4 Dead: in which every character, male/female, is just as capable of fending off zombies and both are treated with respect.
        Just about every RPG on the SNES treats women as equals, and when sexual-harassment does show up, it’s usually frowned upon by every other character.

        And, ironically:
        Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – where She-hulk, Tron, C. Viper play extremely well. Two of those are rendered like cheesecake, but that’s a completely different problem from Marvel.
        Nobody MvC3 calls any other character a bitch, or rapes them. Those concepts come from outside the video games.

    • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

      Neither is the fighting game community’s culture, but you wouldn’t know it based on your awesome article. Thanks!

      • [Rob Beschizza]

        This idea that the culture’s fine, and that this guy is a bad apple, is the real problem here

        • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

          You clearly don’t know much about the culture, or you would understand that this is exactly a case of that. The vast, vast majority of the FGC is condemning this kind of behavior. Again, you wouldn’t know that, because you didn’t write about any of it. But thanks!

        • [wildemar]

          OK, now this is getting ridiculous.

          You say that Fighting Game culture has a problem that it doesn’t want to admit to, while at the same time saying that the rest of gaming culture is *just fine*. You can’t be serious.

          NERD CULTURE as a whole has a problem with treating females as regular people. All of “western” culture has it, but nerd culture much more so. Can we please finally agree on that? Please?

        • [Rob Beschizza]

          Jplowsome

          “blog hits and ad revenue”

          Translation: “Ignore me, I have no argument beyond irrelevant sputtering about what I imagine to be your motives”

          nothingxs, the fighter game community has its own distinct character, and trying to rationalize away its peculiar tolerance for sexism, homophobia and racism–as if they are natural results of rowdiness and trash-talking–won’t help it get past this. 

          it’s easy to disclaim misbehavior in public once it’s under the public spotlight. The proof of the pudding is in what people do when they don’t think they’re being scrutinized– as was the case here with Cross Assault.

        • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

          Except none of this behavior is particularly well-tolerated at all. Other, bigger figures in the fighting game community have been called out on this kind of behavior before behind closed doors, things that you would know if you were part of the community itself.

          We knew we were going to be scrutinized with Cross Assault. It is supposed to be a public thing, for chrissakes.

    • [Brainspore]

      Video game culture at large is not at all like this.

      Thankfully this example is worse than most but the industry as a whole still has a long way to go. Female characters are still by-and-large a bunch of improbably proportioned, scantily-clad adolescent sex fantasies.

      • [BlankUMDsForSale]

        This example is lighter than even a calm night on Xbox Live.  But racism/sexism/everything-ism on online networks is a story that has run countless times and hasn’t changed.   

    • [BlankUMDsForSale]

      yep, no problems in the FPS or TPS communities with racism, sexism, homophobia, or anything like that.  

      It’s all the fighting game community’s fault.  All those thousands of articles about bad “-isms” in gaming were all about fighting games.  

• [SomeGuyNamedMark]

  I’m just amazed that anyone still plays these games.  I never liked them in the first place, they seemed to revolve around memorizing button combinations.

  And you don’t need to play fighting games to hear this sort of talk.  I used to play Warcraft with some of the more hardcore guilds and too many of them were incredibly racist, homophobic and generally awful people.

  • [Ceronomus]

     Yeah, I remember in the old arcade days, watching a guy win game after game of Street Fighter III without ever once looking at the screen. Players hopped in, and he wiped them out. We used to call them “Move Monsters”.

  • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

    “I never liked them in the first place, they seemed to revolve around memorizing button combinations.”

    If that’s all they seemed to revolve around to you, then you clearly never stepped beyond into trying to understand what the games were really about. In which case, that’s all fine and well, but it’s a little nearsighted to pretty much blankly admit you don’t understand what the games are about and then amazed they never took off.

    Clearly, someone saw something you were missing. (And it wasn’t “memorizing button combinations is fun,” trust me.)

    • [Ceronomus]

       Wait, trying to understand what the games were about? Seriously? They weren’t about anything accept taking quarters and tokens. There is no deep philosophy to Street Fighter and yes, at least back through SF III all the best players simply memorized special moves. As I mentioned above, some of them didn’t even bother to watch the screen.

      Now, if you want to look at them as part of the overall arcade experience? The arcade experience tended to be a friendly and communal one. However as someone who was actually a bouncer at an arcade that NEEDED bouncers (Cincinatti’s “Jupiter & Beyond”)? The people we had problems with? The fighting game players. The machines that would be broken into? The fighting games. The games that would spawn fist-fights? The fighting games.

      I never saw anyone get beaten down over a Centipede disagreement.

      That isn’t to say that everyone playing those games was a thug. Hell, the real thugs were quietly playing NBA Jam and having a good time.

      The games were never “about” anything other than making money. They were good at that, and some of the games are really well done. It isn’t the games that are the problem, it is a large portion of the players.

      • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

        I find it very amusing that you are telling someone who has been involved with and played fighting games for roughly ~16 years that there is no “deep philosophy” to Street Fighter and how players actually used to win.

        While your use of anecdotal evidence to prove your overarching point about an entire genre of games is cute (and I think you should know better, considering you’re capable of stringing together a sentence and, therefore, potentially able to dodge something as simple as a logical fallacy), I’ll tell you why you’re wrong in this regard: the very first thing any good player in a fighting game will tell you is that the special moves, while important, are not as important as properly mastering the use of your normal moves. Simple things like doing a crouching medium kick to stuff an opponent’s attempt at throwing a fireball before it ever comes out, that sort of thing.

        As for the old arcade culture? Yes, there’s not a whole lot I can say about that, but I’ve seen more than just Street Fighter break out into fist-fights. I’ve seen pickup basketball games break out into them. I’ve seen pickup soccer games in Mexico break out into them. Primarily, any time you have a directly competitive environment and testosterone, you will occasionally wind up with a situation where civility crumbles and people want to duke it out.

        Centipede is, for the most part, a single player game. Hardly what you’d call directly competitive.

        • [Ceronomus]

           Seriously? Having worked the arcades and watched people win (again…without ever looking at the screen) by stringing together nothing but special moves, I must call your claims of a deeper philosophy laughable.

          So please, enlighten us all to the deeper wisdom of the fighting game. What life-changing lessons are there to be found in the teachings of Ken and Ryu?

          The best players didn’t play against the machine or their opponents, they merely ran their pre-programmed kata of special moves and could not be beaten.

          Don’t get me wrong, learning and memorizing those sequences of moves probably isn’t easy… but it is nothing to pound one’s chest over either.

        • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

          Having been a part of the arcades, as a player, and having been at a large amount of arcades over a broad period of my life, I can definitely tell you that you are wrong.

          David Sirlin wrote a book where he mainly speaks about the many levels of mind games that go on during a game of Street Fighter. You can read it here: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

          To note, what you describe as people running their “kata” of special moves on people, you likely ran into the instance of one person being vastly superior to a large amount of his competition to the point, and the inferior competition being unable to beat the basic, patterned strategy meant that he wasn’t going to expend any additional effort in trying to beat him. This happens a lot in tournaments at the lower levels and first rounds of pools, where you will just repeat an easy strategy that bad players can’t beat rather than try to play against them in an intelligent manner, since trying to play smart against people who aren’t thinking is often counterproductive.

          Learning and memorizing those “sequences of moves” boils down more to learning combos so as to maximize your damage when you actually get the opportunity to land a hit. In the meantime, the majority of the game boils down to controlling the space on the screen and denying your opponent access to it.

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0cFs5mHQC4 

          This video breaks down this concept as best as could be done.

          As for life-changing lessons to be learned in fighting games? There’s plenty, although they’re fairly unique depending on the person. It taught me that putting in effort let me become good at something, and playing in the arcades actually taught me a good deal of social skills (because, surprise, not everyone acts like the person in the video this article is linking to), and it helped me to develop the ability to quickly find the solution to problems, as well as helping my ability to quickly make decisions (this comes up in fighting games often: my opponent is jumping — do I uppercut here? Is the angle right? Am I better served by doing a responding jumping attack? Do I use a crouching fierce?).

          It also taught me that it’s sometimes a lot more about the journey rather than the end of it, but as I said, these are things people take away from games like these that are unique depending on the person.

• [coryf]

  Trash talking is part of sports, and male competition.  You trash talk your opponent to get them to make a mistake, and screw up.  Just listen to all the stuff going on in “White Men Can’t Jump.”  (The title alone is a racism comment). 

  For most people involved, this is enjoyable, and part of the reason why they enjoy the community.  To treat the women involved in the same manner shows a higher level of equality, because they’re being treated EXACTLY the same as the men.  Didn’t watch the show, but how many comments on the men’s “manhood” or other “degrading” comments were made?

  That said, when somebody is really upset and hurt, it’s time to stop, and apologize.  Clearly this guy hasn’t learned this yet.

  Unfortunately, a lot of this is a miscommunication, with women and men having slightly different ways of communicating with each other.

  • [Cefeida]

    Doesn’t White Men Can’t Jump challenge racist stereotypes, though? The racist joke is disproved many times in the film, as is the notion that blacks and whites are somehow incapable of mingling. Then of course racism issues its own challenge right back, and it’s tougher for having centuries of ‘tradition’ behind it, but it does that in life, too. 

    I’m not buying that the racism and sexism is enjoyable for most people- I think they just accept it as part of the environment that has grown around games like this, because they don’t think it can be changed. Just like in White Men Can’t Jump the characters had to deal with the racism, or gtfo the game. 

    It doesn’t mean that’s how it should be, or that this is something we should approve of. 

  • [Thad Boyd]

    “For most people involved, this is enjoyable, and part of the reason why they enjoy the community.  To treat the women involved in the same manner shows a higher level of equality, because they’re being treated EXACTLY the same as the men.  Didn’t watch the show, but how many comments on the men’s “manhood” or other “degrading” comments were made?”

    You make an excellent point.  Insulting men by suggesting they are like women and insulting women for being women is equally insulting to both sexes.

  • [Ceronomus]

     Trash talking has BECOME a part of sports, as good sportsmanship has been phased out by screaming parents.

  • [senorglory]

    in respectful reply to coryf: “To treat the women involved in the same manner shows a higher level of equality, because they’re being treated EXACTLY the same as the men.”

    I’d have been pretty surprised if my basketball coach had ever chided me about dribbling right, by saying that the next time I dribbled right, he’d punish me by getting up real close to smell me while calling out my girlfriend’s name.

  • [MetalPorkchop]

    “women and men having slightly different ways of communicating”?  Apparently we’re from two different planets, Mars and Venus.

    • [bumpngrindcore]

      Don’t worry, he probably gets all his information regarding the sexes from askmen.com and TV sitcoms. 

  • [ShawShaw]

    You might want to watch the clip in the original article before commenting. This isn’t your typical good natured ribbing or trash talk. The man doing the harrassing wasn’t even the woman’s opponent! He was her coach! He was standing right behind her breathing down her neck and asking what her bra size was, telling her to take her shirt off, going on about how he’s going to get her a skirt and maker her wear it, smelling her hair… it’s REALLY creepy. The woman’s teammates sitting right next to her were never targeted in this manner and didn’t lift a finger or say a word to help her! It’s infuriating to watch.

  • [bumpngrindcore]

    “To treat the women involved in the same manner shows a higher level of equality, because they’re being treated EXACTLY the same as the men.”
    Oh, that makes it all clear, then. Next time someone threatens to rape me until I bleed then I’ll just take it as a compliment.

• [puppybeard]

  That’s Japanese beat-em-ups all over. I haven’t played one that hasn’t had an embarrasingly sexualised woman in it since Cammy joined Street Fighter.

  I mean, I love Soul Calibur, but Ivy? Are they fucking serious? If the games look like they were made by compulsively masturbating teenage boys, why would we expect the players to be any different?

  Being surprised by this is like being surprised to discover that men who watch too much porn are convinced that every woman secretly loves anal.

  • [blepom]

     Because Mortal Kombat has no embarrassingly sexualized women, right?
    I know talking crap of Japanese games is all the rage since occident dominated the market with the latest gens, but please.

    • [puppybeard]

      I’ll see your Mortal Kombat and raise you Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball.

• [Ito Kagehisa]

  I think it’s great that these people opened up and showed what they are really like on the inside.  And as painful as that seems to have been for Super Yan, I hope she’s better off for having that knowledge.

  The late Mike Dobbs once pointed out that if you let NAMBLA publish a newsletter, you can easily find out what they are up to.  Censoring is counterproductive.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    And as painful as that seems to have been for Super Yan, I hope she’s better off for having that knowledge.

    Women are supposed to feel better knowing that utterly misogynist men are walking the earth? Can you apply that to Jews, African Americans, LGBT people and the groups that hate them?

    The late Mike Dobbs once pointed out that if you let NAMBLA publish a newsletter, you can easily find out what they are up to.

    But there are laws that mean that you can do something about NAMBLA; in this case, all you can do is feel despair at living in a world of people who hate you.

• [travispulley]

  This is unfortunate, and that person quoted is obviously a jerk whose point of view is… I’ll just say “wrong”.

  But the situation at hand (I rtfa’d!) is a player displayed extremely poor sportsmanship and was not held accountable or penalized in any way. That wouldn’t be tolerated at Wimbledon, a little league game, or anything in between. I applaud her for throwing the match and removing any legitimacy to the win.

  • [senorglory]

    I think it was her coach, not another player, unless I misread the article.  If I misread the article, feel free to get even by making overt sexual overtures towards me, perhaps even standing so close to me that you can smell me.  My girlfriend’s name is Rose.  

• [James]

   How very unpleasant.

  Now, please bear with me while I decry these individuals and their use of foul, denigrating language and broad-brush steretypes in the exact same manner.

  They’re inexcusable, yes, but how do the various comments writing off the entire gaming community as being “all the same” help exactly?

• [millie fink]

  Meet the sexist, GASP! racist pigs of Capcom’s fighting-game reality show

  Seriously Rob, thanks for using the r-word here. It’s so rarely used by BB posters, as if it’s impolite or something to use that word. Thanks again for calling it what it is!

  Come to think of it, I remember this piece that discusses that very problem at BB–

  http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2010/03/describe-racism-as-political.html 

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    Confirmation bias. We’re never shy to use the term, and use it often. Accordingly, the post at Stuff White People Do is hand-wringing silliness about our imaginary hand-wringing silliness.

    Senator Jeff Sessions, hypocritical racist moonbat
    http://boingboing.net/2009/07/13/senator-jeff-session.html

    Racist signs in Thailand
    http://boingboing.net/2008/04/08/racist-signs-in-thai.html

    Lou Dobbs upgraded from “racist blowhard” to “totally hypocritical racist blowhard”
    http://boingboing.net/2010/10/07/lou-dobbs-douchebag.html

    License plate with coded racist message recalled
    http://boingboing.net/2010/04/27/license-plate-with-c.html

    Websites collect clueless, racist internet comments made about Japan, post-quake
    http://boingboing.net/2011/03/12/websites-collect-clu.html

    Those racist, crazy 1990s Ron Paul newsletters? He signed off on every single one, associates say
    http://boingboing.net/2012/01/27/those-racist-crazy-1990s-ron.html

    Alabama’s racist “immigration” law creates misery and fear for brown people
    http://boingboing.net/2011/10/15/alabamas-racist-immigration-law-creates-misery-and-fear-for-brown-people.html

    • [millie fink]

      Use it “often”? Ironic usage of the term “confirmation bias” there, Rob. Anyway, thanks again.

      • [Ito Kagehisa]

         Hey,  it’s not “a directory of racist things”, you know.  As far as I’m concerned it’s mentioned quite often.

        • [millie fink]

          Right. But the point is more that when “things” that are racist are mentioned, they’re sometimes called something else instead of racist (see the Stuff White People Do post on that). I was basically applauding Rob for doing the right thing here by directly using the r-word in such a case. I’m not saying BB has never done that before.

  • [marthamasters]

    Where was the racism on the show? I couldn’t find any evidence of the “casual racism” Rob claims occurred on the show.

• [Josef Mendelsohn]

  As a fighting game fanatic, I must take issue with the broad-strokes language being utilized in the article above. Yes, Anis and his ilk are troglodytes. That goes without saying. Yes, the genre is exploitative towards women and racial stereotypes to a fault.  But not all of us are mouth-breathing forum lurkers, and I resent being associated as such. I would like very much for this aspect of our community to change, but the hate inherent in the community is frustrating and the developers pander to their interests. This series is simply the capstone on a long legacy. Fighting games are not incapable of respectful portrayals of women: Virtua Fighter has a character fight in a Kimono, for instance. 

  • [wysinwyg]

    As a fighting game fanatic, I must take issue with the broad-strokes language being utilized in the article above.

    Unfortunately for you, it’s accurate.  If you have a problem with that then it’s your responsibility to do something: be the change you want to see.

    • [Josef Mendelsohn]

      I do not mean to say that sexism does not exist within the community, or that the article is wrongheaded. I just feel that it maligns the entirety of the community as a single sexist collective, which is false. 

      • [wysinwyg]

        And I’m just saying that if you don’t want the fighting game community to look like a bunch of racist, sexist asshats it’s your responsibility as a member of that community to do something about it. Complaining to people outside that community who notice it looks like a bunch of sexist and racist emotional adolescents won’t do you any good.  You need to convince people IN the community to stop acting that way.

        • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

          You could see how this becomes a problem when we’ve put out hours upon veritable hours of straightforward, clearly non-sexist and non-racist stuff for people to look on the Internet and are being judge widespread on a single incident, which we ourselves take issue with.

        • [Josef Mendelsohn]

          You are in no way incorrect and I apologize if I came off as confrontational. 

• [benher]

  What the fuck is wrong with everyone?
  Remember the part where you throw the fireball or do the spinning bird kick?

• [John Hoffman]

  I am sixty-five years old, with two grown-up daughters, one of whom is an active gamer. She and I agree that the incessant ripping on women is why young boys  interact badly with girls in real-time. The on-line community re-enforces the bad behavior. This why some young boys never learn and never get laid.

  • [IronEdithKidd]

    The on-line community re-enforces the bad behavior.  This why some young boys never learn and never get laid.

    I view this as a feature, rather than a bug.

  • [Cefeida]

    I think you only have half of the truth here- the on-line community reinforces bad behaviour, but that bad behaviour stems from our own offline society, which STILL treats women as inferior to men, albeit more subtly than in years past. 

    Be careful not to lay the blame solely on the online world and ignore the symptoms in the offline world. The former is contained in the latter.

• [Develsaa]

  Well listening to the whole thing, that sounds pretty par to the course of most gaming communities I’ve been involved in. I’ve been a ‘gamer’ over half of my life. When I was a teenager I was often the only girl in the arcade, and was treated as a novelty. (Even when I started working at one). I can vividly remember walking into my friends cyber cafe to be gawked at and treated with silencing the room for logging into my Diablo II account and .. playing. “Holy **** she can play!”. 

  When I dipped my toe into MMO’s I found by and large that if you defend yourself against the comments, you’re told “Lighten up, it’s only a joke, if you don’t like it stop playing”.  When you then do defend yourself again, and tell them to knock it off, often you get the reputation of not being a game player, or ‘stuck-up’, or not fun around that you learn just to suck it up, grow thicker skin, and not rise to the occasion. 

  Among the comments of “You must be playing on your brother/husband/male related friend/’s account, you must be a lesbian, or you must be ugly”.  The fun one was some guy repeatedly spamming “show me your tits”. 

  While the years have gotten kinder to female gamers, just the other day I logged into a raid in wow introducing a new person and was told “What a woman raid leader, I’m not listening to a girl”. 

  (And let’s not get started on how armor changes if you are playing a male or female, the only game that I’ve played when a female toon was actually covered up head to toe was a Korean RPG, the rest, oh my gosh yes, a bikini is going to defend against your sword.)

• [Phil Harris]

  If there are some of you who think that everyone in the FGC is like this: 
  http://shoryuken.com/2012/02/29/back-to-basics-getting-beyond-the-drama/

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    A fine example of a grown-up trying to make a lesson in decency palatable to an audience he knows won’t like the taste of it!

    • [Phil Harris]

      I wish I had the credit of writing the article at Shoryuken.com, but that credit belongs to Tom Cannon, the founder of both the website and of the Evolution Championship Series, one of the biggest fighting game tournaments in the world, as well as long standing community leader.

      As a member of the FGC, I have to say that Aris’ comments on the show do not reflect the community as a whole. Sure, mild hostility is a part of the arcade culture that the community is built on, but it’s limited to that of trash talking and not of sexual harassment. And even then, there’s still mutual respect between players. Despite Aris’ apology on Twitter ( http://www.twitlonger.com/show/g65iqn ), the controversy has painted an ugly picture of the community in the eyes of many mainstream gaming websites (such as Boing Boing, Penny Arcade, Destructoid, etc.) which is unfortunate to say the least. The community is a lot more respectful of women than what Aris initially showed during his time on Cross Assault and I hope that this and the Shoryuken.com article will show that to you and your readers. Thanks.

      - Phil Harris

  • [MetalPorkchop]

    I couldn’t watch the full video, so I don’t know if I missed something in the second half, but it made me sad and disinterested at the same time.  It reminded me a bit of this one time, ages ago, we snuck into an ordinary casino (it was no Monte Carlo), to avoid waiting in line for an hour, and it was one of the most depressing sights I’ve ever seen.  Seeing these people staring at screens, barely blinking, pushing buttons, with their mouths gaping, well it’s like this video.  The sad souls in this casino didn’t have fans, but had they, it would’ve been just as sad.

• [tros]

  (I’m trying to put this post at the right response time to somebody else.)

• [Peter Vervloet]

  Soooo… you’re just taking this opportunity to take a quick jab at the Street Fighter cast which has been liked and appreciated the world over for twenty-five years now because…?

  Oh right, an easy method of generating hits.

  • [shallowknave]

    It’s past time for fierce criticism of the game’s short-sighted design philosophy. If only they had been more forward thinking and designed more strong characters around house-friendly rules and archetypes. Don’t think you’re capable of pulling it off?

    Sure you can.

  • [Felton / Moderator]

    Not reading the article before commenting is one thing, but did you not even read the full headline?

    • [Brandon Smith]

      What are you talking about?

      “The Street Fighter series is a world tour of crude national and ethnic stereotypes to beat up—what exactly do we expect?”

      He clearly read the article.

  • [bumpngrindcore]

    “There’s an article about a genuine problem with the gaming community, it must just be here to get hits!”

    If only I had a dollar for every time I saw a comment of this ilk on a gaming forum. 

• [Ceronomus]

  I love how Aris is now claiming that…

  “My statements do not reflect those of Capcom or myself.”

  What a load of crap. Seriously, this guy is a troll and an asshole who should be dragged out into the light so everyone can see what sort of person he REALLY is. Perhaps then others will learn from the lesson.

  • [Cefeida]

    Or himself? So whose statements do his statements reflect?

    Sounds like he’s backpedalling. Maybe he’ll learn something from this.

• [snowmentality]

  Reminded me of Fat, Ugly, or Slutty, the blog that collects and mocks examples of sexist, racist gamer piggery. The examples from the PA article are exactly the kind of stuff that shows up at FUoS.

  It’s all pretty amazing, in a trainwreck, horrible, “WTF who says that?!” kind of way.

• [BlankUMDsForSale]

  Here’s a post from a real live stream monster/fighting game fan since SF2 and not some outsider. :Kappa

  this is not even worth reading past the headline, which is completely terrible for a number of reasons.  There was sexism involved…Aris’ comments.  One guy.  So what’s this “pigs” business about?   I think you’re doing some hurtful generalizations yourself, mr. games journalist.  but it’s okay, blog insults bounce off normal people because they know you don’t have a real, honest job that’ll sustain you past 26 (or whatever age [gawker/insert shit blog here] euthanizes their “old and useless” who have become too old to be hip.)
  More importantly, there was no racism involved and the FGC is the most racially diverse community of gamers out there, so you can seriously shove those comments up your ass, as they reflect your complete lack of knowledge about the subject you reported on.  As in, you clearly didn’t even google anything before posting this crap.  I’m not saying you’re not gonna here “nigga” several times a night on a fighting game stream, but young black people tend to say it to each other a lot and lots of young black people play these games.  It’s also 2012 and if you find casual use of “nigga” somehow racist, then I feel bad.  It ain’t my word, I don’t use outside of very context specific situations, but I sure as hell am not intimidated by it.  Outside of that, there is no racism in the least.  I really hate this in your title because the diversity is really a credit to the FGC community image–you don’t see this kind of diversity in a scene very often–yet you’re just flat out saying racism is a problem.   

  What happened on Cross Assault?  The players in the scene are pretty much all friends and have a certain level of comfortableness with each other.  Aris is the token “guy who takes it too far” and always has been.  Then he took it too far with the wrong person and in public, which is horrible and almost everyone prominent in the FGC has denounced it.  There will be no headhunt for Aris, no lawsuits, no deep introspection by the entire community, or any other inflammation of this situation– people already know it’s bad and have publicly apologized.  Does Aris need to do some introspection about the whole thing?  Yeah, he needs to learn not to talk like that to random girls ever.  But that’s not the entire community’s job, nor is there a real endemic problem worth addressing, so please chill on the trashy sensationalist articles.  If you want to talk about problems with casual sexism, feel free to use the FGC for some examples, but make the discussion about sexism in gaming in general because there is nothing in the FGC that I haven’t seen the same or worse of in other communities and the games themselves.  Of course, there are about 1000 gaming sexism articles written a year, so don’t act like it’s a new and sensational thing.  Actually try to be a journalist for once and write a unique article about it, instead of fishing for easy, low hanging fruit and exploiting it.  

  • [Ceronomus]

     Maybe if the FGC were to stop making it so easy? There is plenty of “low-hanging fruit”, which shows that there is a problem, whether you want to face it or not. That doesn’t mean that you are a PART of the problem, but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

    • [BlankUMDsForSale]

       It’s interesting that all these articles and people like yourself default to depicting the FGC as some out of control, in-human thing that has no self-awareness.   

      I’d like specific examples of “low hanging fruit” please.  Things that were intentionally, hurtfully sexist or racist and went completely unaddressed by the community.  Because if you think there’s a serious problem with something in the FGC, you’re really misinterpreting what you’re watching…99% of the time the pop-offs and insults are all in the game and competition.  If they aren’t, you can be sure as hell they’ll get addressed, just like Aris has been addressed by people in the community.  

      Otherwise, if by “stop making it so easy,” you want the community to stop being itself, then maybe it’s just not for you.  Move on instead of trying to impose monocles and good, PC manners on people who don’t need to be rescued and can handle their own drama without outside input.

      Feel free to rant about casual use of words in competition, it’ll be a drop in the ocean of people who don’t care because the players will continue to express themselves however they want and many viewers are interested in everyone playing being real instead of acting like a manufactured corporate face.  

      • [LogrusZed]

         Whole bunch of problem here:

        1) So it’s cool to talk about raping someone if it’s “popping off” (which I presume to mean while gaming) but not while doing things other than gaming?

        2) It’s ok if it’s not in public and with the right woman, just make sure the woman you’re joking about raping is “cool” first and you’re in private (just in case, wink wink)

        3) As long as someone said something negative about this kind of thing then the group is now considered to be “all good” because the apology or contrition of an individual covers the group.

        4) Don’t take the actions of an individual as representative of the beliefs of the group. Wait, what was #3 again?

        5) This kind of behavior isn’t unique to fighting games and any article that focuses on one specific subject is invalid. Right, so if Arsenic says “poison” but fails to mention cyanide then I can probably disregard the warning on the arsenic as invalid.

        6) Yes, we want the community to “stop being itself” if “being itself” means “being pricks”. Sort of like how we wanted Germany to “stop being such Nazis”, turns out Germany didn’t have to be Nazis. I’m pretty sure you can mash buttons, memorize counters, wiggle a joystick, and have BO without calling people racist names or threatening rape. Maybe I overestimate your community.

        7) When words designed to hate and or intimidate others are used “casually” then that’s where the real problem of systematic ignorance is exemplified.

        8) This isn’t a real problem Vs. There are several articles about this every year.

        Nobody is infringing on your freedom of speech, we’re exercising our freedom of thought by thinking that you just might be assholes.

        Is it the game you enjoy, or the security of a pecking order that you think you can work your way upwards in? Because you actually can play the game without being a prick, and if you want to have a “racism/sexism” club you can have that too (do you like golf?)

      • [bumpngrindcore]

        If you think being misogynist homophobic hateful scumfuckerry is the the community “being itself”, then it’s no wonder people stigmatize and ridicule gamers so much, and I have no sympathy for your fragile ego being slighted by that.

        Also, seeing as we live in a white hetero patriachy, isn’t it “politically correct” to be a sexist racist bigot? But then again, you’re probably one of those guys who thinks that straight white men are now are now the most oppressed group in society because they can’t say “n*****r” or pat their receptionist on the arse. 

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    Whoever said I was a games journalist? Is that like a pink unicorn?

    • [BlankUMDsForSale]

      hilarious, I can tell you are truly a Quirky Internet Dude!™   It’s hilarious how you can take two disparate things like the color “pink” and “unicorns” and mash them together for a humorous effect!  So fresh— not generic at all, like, say, posting a sensationalistic article for hits to your blog.

      So, fine, take away the “games” qualifier, but I think that only hurts you more.  Or just take away journalist altogether and just call yourself a “writer” or “blogger” whatever,  give yourself any title you want, the fact is that you reblogged without fact checking anything.  I don’t care if you’re a journalist or a random guy on a forum– it’s bad form and trashy and you did it for hits.

      But considering your comments on twitter and dismissive comment about my post, you seem pretty committed to just douching it up regarding this story, so have fun.  Life and the world would be more interesting if you would actually discuss things and learn though, instead of being a stereotypical unethical blogger who exploits drama for hits.  

      • [Rob Beschizza]

        Your embittered, unfunny sarcasm pleases me!

        “You reblogged without fact checking anything”

        Sorry, what was the factual error?

      • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

        I did a whole presentation on this once. Bloggers technically do not need to meet the ethical guidelines of journalists since they are not, in fact, journalists.

        Which makes it pretty easy for people like Rob Beschizza to go ahead and post tripe like this. The funniest part is where some of my comments have outright vanished and been unanswered by him when I make points against the post, but hey, it’s always easier to censor than it is to make a coherent argument!

        • [Rob Beschizza]

          You haven’t had any comments removed. You know we can check that, right?

        • [LogrusZed]

           Wow, you did a presentation once? What are the ethical guidelines for people who do presentations? I’ll bet that they are super-hard, like way harder than those of a blogger.

    • [elephanthhj]

      What’s pretty clear is that you read an article on another website and then reported your opinion on that article, without even bothering to go to the source itself and research it or talk to the people involved.    Unfortunate so many blog sites follow this same pattern of ignorant sensationalism just to get a couple more hits.

      • [Rob Beschizza]

        See, you’re just chucking up boilerplate complaints about media ignorance and disinterest.  It’s not ignorant to have a negative opinion of  sexism and homophobia in fighter game culture – especially when it’s being financed by Capcom. 

        • [Andres Velasco y Coll]

          Sexism and homophobia? Coming from a company that pretty much openly has a transsexual character in their fighting games.

          And the “sexism and homophobia” you refer to is directly specified at one person. You’re chucking up huge blanket statements about a community based on what one person says, which is pretty ignorant.

          Why is this article about the “sexist, racist pigs” of the community instead of just the one person who is actually responsible for his comments? Oh, right, because it doesn’t get hits otherwise.

        • [Rob Beschizza]

          Scapegoating Aris won’t work. It’s plain as day what happens in the FGC in public settings — did you watch the show? How do you expect to be taken seriously treating it as if a single victim had a single problem with a single guy, just because that’s the single event that attracted public attention to the rest of it?

          “Why? … hits”

          Whenever people say this, it’s like slamming the piano keys angrily because they have no tune to play.

        • [Jose A. Gomez]

          Do you blame school shootings on violent video games and/or think CoD players tend to become violent killers?

      • [teapot]

        What’s pretty clear is that you are all streaming here from some gaming forum to piss and moan about farming hits when BB really doesn’t have to worry about such shit. This happens every time there is a post about a specific net-savvy community – a bunch of comments from noobs with no comment history attacking the author.

        This isn’t some doofus’ hokey blog full of opinion and lacking substance. There is a reason this is the most popular non-subject-specific blog on the net and it isn’t hit farming. Actually we would rather you just stay the fuck away if you are incapable of understanding why people might be annoyed by this.

        BB is massively supportive of the gaming comminuty, until some dumb fuck, who never should’ve been given a public voice, blurts out something retarded and indicative of the male-dominated gaming community’s philosophy. Don’t pretend there isn’t a massive undercurrent of sexism out there – I’ve been a gamer since NES (well, actually I had an Amiga before consoles existed) and since you had to direct-dial your friend’s modem to play doom – and there has always been misogynistic fucks in the community. Instead of coming here to complain, how about you bitch at the fucktard who has brought disrepute to the community? Misdirected anger much?

• [teapot]

  Who even plays fighting games anymore?

  This genre died with Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat 3. Tekken was just a pathetic joke of a game played by pimple-faced losers with no real-world skills.

  ^Two can play the name calling game, you fucking pathetic assholes.

  • [fiks]

    If it died, then how come EVO last year had 2000-3000 players and 9000 spectators there and a peak of 80,000 people watching on stream?
    If it died, how come there are http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?forums/tournaments-events.96/ all of these events across the country, including countless meetups?
    If it died, how come there are at least 8 fighting games releasing in 2012?

    • [teapot]

       How come any serious gamer doesn’t give a shit?

      When I say ‘died’ it was to imply that games subsequent to those were crap compared to the ones I mentioned. A game’s playability is not related to polygon count.

      ~110,000,000 tickets were sold for the film The Exorcist and it was one of the shittiest wastes of celluloid ever. Numbers don’t mean fa…. but if you insist on being a simpleton and relying on random numbers to prove a point:
      Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 sold 6.5 million copies in the first 24 hours. That makes your ‘popular’ fighting game pathetic in comparison.

      • [magusX1]

         You use the comment Serious gamer and Call of Duty in the same sentence. Now that is hilarious. I doubt you can handle a real game like Dark Souls.

• [dommafia]

  HEY GUYS look one guy said something crazy lets use that guy to represent everyonez0rrrrr

  • [nachoproblem]

     The guy saying crazy stuff is claiming to represent everyonez0rrrrr. That’s part of why he’s an ass.

• [nachoproblem]

  This isn’t so much wallowing in the ass-end of gaming culture, it’s wallowing in the ass-end of moral relativism. The line of, “it has to be this way because it’s part of the culture,” taken down to the level of Street Fighter (for cryin’ out loud) is an unconscious reductio-ad-absurdum, where you declare yourself to be a culture, therefore “Whateva! I do what I want!” I started playing Street Fighter before this kid was even born, and I feel entitled to say: JUDAISM is a tradition. Street Fighter is just a habit, and not even a good one.

  • [LogrusZed]

     You see this a lot with the figurative and literal flag-wavers of so-called “Southern Culture” who stamp feet and have a hissy when you bring up the battle-flags association with a history of slavery and oppression. “But my great pappy fought for hurrr durrr!!” Well that may be so, but Franz here has a grandparent who fought under the National Socialists, you want he should have a twisted cross flying in the lawn next to yours? Trying to point out that the Stars and Bars wasn’t even the flag of that aborted attempt at a republic results in blank stares.

    The idiocy there, as it is here, is people clinging to whatever is convenient for them and insisting that the other show a kind of respect they are unwilling to even consider granting in return.

    I made the mistake of commenting on this on Kotaku yesterday (from whence I suspect some of our “visitors” are coming today) only to be rebuffed by what seemed like borderline-illiterate Randian philosophers (12 y/o boys is another term for them) with the same kind of back-biting contradictory rhetoric this thread has become flooded with (reading the original comments by Aris seem to indicate this kind of thinking is endemic “You can have your sandwich without onions” “Can I have my gaming without racism” “No!”).

    • [bumpngrindcore]

      No shit.

      I find it amusing that whenever something like this happens, the troglodyte scum of the gaming community use the whole “But freedumb uvv speeeeech!!!” defense. 
      Then an article pops up up BB which they think is being mean to them and they’re all sobbing like the entitled little brats they are.

      People like that are the reason I’m ashamed to call myself a gamer. 

      • [Ceronomus]

         You can have freedom of speech…it doesn’t mean that you aren’t a misogynistic asshole.

• [Jus Christian]

  Some thoughts from a fighting game fan:
  1. Cross Assault, like almost all reality programming, is a vacuous and hollow marketing spectacle unworthy of anyone’s attention.
  2. Aris exposed himself as a sexist herb and he deserves our admonishment, if not outright ostracism. True, the fighting game community is NOT polite society. It’s motley, aggressive, insular, and obsessive. That’s part of what makes it special. But a community is responsible for its members. To protect them when they need protection. To correct them when they need correction. The FGC is still an overwhelmingly male dominated club, but it’s thankfully not male exclusive. The sexism within our community doesn’t just eat away at the women among us, it cannibalizes the whole. We need to fix that shit.
  3. Racist ass sexist ass xenophobic ass hetero-normative ass Street Fighter is still better than your favorite game franchise.

• [bumpngrindcore]

  Hahaha, reckon there’s some butthurt mouthbreathers from reddit and Kotaku visiting BB today. 

  Seriously, my fellow gamers. Stop being whiny little hypocrites. Everytime  a woman or member of the GLBT community makes a legitimate complaint about reprehensible treatment at the hands of gamers, you’re so quick to retort “STOP BEING SO HYPERSENSITIVE, MAN UP!!!” 
  I think it’s about time you took your own advice, don’t you? 

• [wildemar]

  > The really insane thing is Capcom’s cluelessness trying to sell the ass end of gaming culture as television.
  That is stunningly insulting. I can’t believe someone would consciously write that. What’s next? Hip-Hop isn’t really music?

• [LogrusZed]

   Actually it had to do with the comments made by the coach of Team Tekken on Capcom’s reality show. The fact that you ASSumed it was a comment on the characters in the game itself indicates that you think they might be perceived of as racist cultural stereotypes.

  But reading isn’t cool, or something.

• [teapot]

   ….This is about sexism, but your ‘tourneys’ probably don’t involve any women so how can we expect you to know anything about them when your lame little gatherings are just sausage-fests for friendless nobodies? And no, lamewads with the same pathetic interests don’t count as friends.

• [fiks]

  I know the article is primarily about sexism, but I have to call out sensationalist tack-on bullshit when I see it.
  While I suspect that you might be trolling, there also might be a misconception here. The FGC isnt just people who share “the same pathetic interests”. These people meet week after week in various locations across america, personally at each other’s houses or other venues, for meetups and tournaments.  To act like the people who attend these things arent friends with many people they meet there is like assuming people never make friends in any level of school or sports.Hell, read some of this. 

  http://davidkong07.bol.ucla.edu/competitive_video_games_and_social_capital.pdf Admittedly, the amount of women is quite low, even if the racial, religious, sexual, etc representation is very wide and open. Misogyny is a problem in all of the world, including the FGC, but acting like all or even most of us are sexist let alone to Aris’s degree is just inaccurate BS. The reality show was mostly alright(problems were due to it being  a reality show, not aris lol). Aris’s nonsense hardly represents it.

• [teapot]

  They say fight fire with fire. To me this translates as fight troll with troll. So yes, I am trolling the trolls who saw fit to blather their cookie-cutter opinion endlessly. As I stated above: take your fight to the sexist fucks in the community if you don’t all want to be tarred with the same brush, because I’m good at tarring and wonderful at trolling.