You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t want online gaming to improve when it comes to interactions with each other. Who will acknowledge that there is a small minority of gamers who like to push the envelope too far. That are, by their very nature, toxic. Thankfully, there are ways to silence them so that such people can’t ruin the experience of others but, for some, it doesn’t appear to be enough. Every now and then an organization will appear that thinks it can tackle the problem. However, organizations such as Bully Hunters and The Watch are not the solution to tackling racism or gamer toxicity.
For Bully Hunters, a predictably short-lived organization, its approach was to hunt down online bullies ingame. Gamers who felt bullied or harassed would pay a Bully Hunter to join the game and start “hunting” the toxic offender. A ludicrous approach to the issue since it solved nothing and relied on the skills of the Bully Hunter to try and bully the bully. The organization, founded by marketing agency FCB Chicago, made sure it was an all-female group of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players.
The goal of Bully Hunters was to combat ingame harassment of women online. But in order to garner support and revenue, the organization used fake facts and falsified scenarios to push its narrative. All which came to light under the scrutiny of the gaming community that asked for sources and citations to back up the claims being made.
Shortly after Bully Hunters announced and showcased their services via a “livestream,” it quickly became the target of scorn, ridicule, and criticism resulting in the quick distancing from the organization by its sponsors such as Vertagear and SteelSeries. Especially as allegations that Bully Hunters members were toxic themselves along with representative Natalie “ZombiUnicorn” Casanova who had a history of tweets containing homophobic and abusive language.
While Bully Hunters’ goal was to stop online harassment a new group, calling itself The Watch, wants to specifically target racism in the online community. The group announced its presence on July 11th, 2022 with a series of tweets that opened with, “
“We’re on a mission to create a gaming community where everyone feels welcome
And no one has to hear racist language while they play
Be an ally in the fight against racism in gaming
Together we can get game developers to take real action”
It sounds nice, though I always thought the gaming community was a welcoming one. No one cared about skin color, religion, and political beliefs. All that mattered was that we were having fun playing the same game where we were either working together or competing, talking smack, and clapping back. Were there the trolls and toxic minority to try and ruin the fun? Sure. But they tended to be silenced pretty quickly.
At least…when everyone was running dedicated servers and could enforce their own rules. Then developers got greedy and, for a time, tried to get rid of dedicated servers. The purpose was to entice consumers to play on their official servers to keep track of the metrics by enticing gamers with matchmaking, loot drops, and ranking systems to name a few selling points. But it came with a huge price.
Toxicity was now rampant and players powerless to do anything except to report these individuals and hope that the developers and publishers would do something about them. Over time, rules and punishments were created, methods to detect rule breaking, options for players to modify their gaming experience, and a reporting system implemented to deal with the recalcitrant.
So what is The Watch proposing? Right now, their efforts are focused on the Call of Duty community and are asking people to watch Twitch streamers, clip any instances of racist language being used, and then DM the clip to The Watch. Then the plan is to take all these clips and show it to Activision Blizzard,
“The end game:
We want Activision and other game developers to come to the table and work with us to make getting racism out of gaming a top priority. This means more transparent reporting, tougher enforcement for in-game racism, and regular engagement with community members.
The goal is to show game developers how widespread racist language is in their games. We don’t want to target any gamers individually and are asking all submissions to be DM’d to us so no bullying takes place. Let’s come together as a community to get racism out of gaming.”
The Watch’s statement about its end game is rather confusing and incongruent. They imply that Activision Blizzard doesn’t treat racism as a top priority, even though they supply players with many options to deal with racism in the game. This implication is not backed up with any examples to the contrary or to back up their claim. The Watch goes on to say they want more transparency, enforcement, and regular engagement. But I’ll get to that later.
What is exceptionally puzzling with their statement is that they want to get “racism out of gaming…” but they “don’t want to target any gamers individually.” Which leaves me confused. How are you going to get rid of racism if you don’t get rid of the cause of racism? More specifically, the individuals spouting racist slurs and rhetoric.
You can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the other or changing their minds or behavior.
Personally, I found the best way to deal with bullies was to beat the bully. Whether with my fists, my keyboard and mouse, or with admin powers on the servers I used to play on.
But the million dollar question I have to ask is, what does The Watch suggest to better deal with racism in gaming that developers and publishers, like Activision Blizzard, haven’t already implemented? After all, as I said before, there are multiple options available for players when dealing with racist gamers. Players can mute text and chat and they can mute individuals ingame which is the easiest thing to do. Such players can be blocked so that they cannot harass you out of game via chats. Then you can report them to the developer and publisher. Not to mention that specific terms are prevented from being typed in the chat and, finally, the matchmaking system for online games makes it harder to run into the same individuals so they can’t track you down and follow you.
The organization doesn’t provide any specifics. Just general things they like to hard on which is more transparency, tougher enforcement, more engagement with the community. But nothing beyond that despite their message being, “We want Activision and other game developers to come to the table and work with us to make getting racism out of gaming a top priority.”
Let’s take a look at The Watch’s suggestion of “tougher enforcement.” I mean, how much tougher can you get when it is a bannable offense? Is banning not tough enough? In fact, the method they are asking gamers to utilize, report racism via clipping livestream, makes it almost impossible to do. And guess what? Any streamer stupid enough to say racist things on a livestream will get banned and lose their income stream (temporarily or permanently). Look at professional esports players when they are either outright racist or accidentally let something slip. They tend to be fired and ostracized from the scene.
Racism is treated harshly in the gaming sphere. But The Watch wants tougher enforcement?
What would tougher enforcement entail?
Unfortunately, The Watch provides no answers, suggestions, or fixes to this problem. Just repeats over and over again that they want developers to come to the table and work with them to be tougher, more transparent, and provide more community engagement.
Unsurprisingly, there was an immediate backlash from the gaming community that made common sense suggestions such as muting a racist player. But, puzzlingly, The Watch’s response to this suggestion was,
“Muting racist language is not a real solution. It just masks the problem instead of solving it and forces already marginalized gamers to accept a worse gaming experience. We want to work with game developers to create meaningful change that goes beyond the mute button.”
Now I tend to disagree with their position. Muting does help with the problem. In fact, if everyone were to mute and ignore such players chances are that a majority of them would eventually stop. Such lowlifes thrive on the attention and get a kick from making people angry and uncomfortable. Who prey on the emotionally weak and less resilient of society.
Take away their spotlight and many of them would curl up and wither away like the trolls they are; hiding under their rickety, fecal-festered bridge.
Of course, The Watch thinks individual players shouldn’t be targeted for being racist. So I continue to be confused by their stance. And, once again, no specific suggestions or new ideas about what can be done aside from The Watch stating, ad nauseum, that they want developers and publishers to take real action against racism.
Since July, they have not stated anything beyond this. Not on their Twitter feed or in the interviews with sites such as Vice. They just want to bring the developers and publishers to the table.
They also want to bring all the news outlets like New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Wired, and more to the table by asking that these outlets directly message The Watch to see how they can help.
“Stopping racism in gaming starts with recognizing there’s a problem.”
I agree with The Watch that racism is a problem. It just isn’t as big of a problem as it was 15 years ago as developers and publishers started to get greedy and either force and/or entice gamers to play on their official servers. But, over the years, they took steps to combat it and provide the tools needed for players to curate their experience as much as possible.
The Watch’s suggestions, which aren’t really suggestions, would result in developers and publishers spending more money. A fact they are well aware of as they state in a tweet,
“Why we’re asking game developers to do more:
Gamers can do their part, but developers must also take a more active role to combat racism in their games. We’ll push for change until developers put their money where they promised their mouths were during every Black History month.”
So there are a couple issues with this statement. I stated before that to be more transparent, tougher, and be more engaging would mean that developers and publishers would have to spend more money. Which would cut into their profits. So if The Watch were to have some real solutions to this problem, and the developers and publishers would be willing to pay for it, who would those expenses get pushed onto?
The gamers.
Gamers can vote, report, and even mute such players who are being toxic. So what more is needed to be done on the dev’s end? Spend tons of money to come up with a way to monitor voice chat? Spend even more hiring people to review reports or voice logs? Implement invasive software to violate a person’s privacy such as what Riot Games has done in accordance to the Chinese government’s wishes with the Anti-Addiction System? Are devs supposed to pay more to try and combat this? If so, then they have to pass on the extra expenses to someone. Could mean higher prices for the game, more expensive DLC, or the game chopped into single player and multiplayer discs that cost $70 each. Perhaps new forms of paywalls would be devised.
Yet, no matter what, racism would still not be fully wiped out. In fact, would it even have any further impact? At some point, there is a diminishment of returns on your investment and developers would have a good idea of where that point would be.
But now we get to the crux of this farce. Yes, The Watch is a farce. Ignoring the whole black history month spiel, they are blatantly using skin color to try and drum up support and money. Because it wouldn’t surprise me that they want to be paid by the developers and publishers who “come to the table” for their suggestions, opinions, and insights. While I have no evidence to support this allegation, I do know that people don’t do this for free.
The Watch is founded and supported by a group that calls itself Melanin Gamers. An organization that wishes to create a space for people of color that is “diverse and inclusive.” Yet wants to segregate itself from the gaming community rather than creating a community of like-minded individuals from all walks of life who enjoy gaming.
To put it bluntly, it is only for people of a certain skin color. A problem in, and of, itself.
Yet, if racism were so prevalent, as they claim, then why not post videos showcasing this on a regular basis? Why rely on a 30-second clip that, in my opinion, is rather tame to what I have heard or been the recipient of. For an organization built on the claim that racism is a major problem there sure hasn’t been a lot of evidence being posted on their part.
The gaming community calls The Watch, Bully Hunters 2.0. However, there are major differences between the two. Bully Hunters focused on gender discrimination and making gamers pay for their all-female services in order to get some of that simp money. The Watch focuses on racial discrimination and making developers and publishers pay for their services (allegedly). While their focuses are different, their aim is the same. They are grifting money, but from different sources and taking different approaches.
Thankfully, the gaming community isn’t falling for either one.
With Bully Hunters, it was an over-the-top grift that focused on a game, CS:GO, where 20% of the gaming community is comprised of female gamers. But, right now, fighting for women’s rights is a lucrative business. Saying they are oppressed gets you social clout. Declaring that women make less than men is spouted as fact. But unfortunately for Bully Hunters, they were exceptionally pathetic in trying to cash in on that oppression money.
The Watch feels just like another kind of grift because it is monetizing their skin color and a faux message. Monetizing their skin color for interviews. Monetizing their skin color for Twitter likes. Monetizing their skin color to push segregation within the gaming community.
They are not the solution and they don’t seem to have the answers.
If you are leading with the color of your skin, then I am not going to take you seriously. You want people to judge you by your skin color, not by the content of your character or the quality of your actions.
To me, The Watch is just another group hoping to grab some cash from the oppression Olympics. Just like Bully Hunters and Feminist Frequency were.
So where does the gaming community go from here? To the past! Personally, the golden age of gaming was the 1990s and even the early 2000s when it comes to online communities. Where gamers created their own groups around games that supported dedicated servers and the modding community. Servers that they could curate and mold to what they wanted their gaming environment to be.
One such organization was the HomeLAN Federation & Alliance which provided a safe and mature space for everyone. Rules were very simple. No swearing, no racism, no sexism, no homophobia, and no cheating. There were also dedicated admins that you could quickly get in touch with via a live reporting system.
And it worked!
When someone joined a HomeLAN server they knew that they were going to have a great time without the drama. And, if there was any drama or issues, it wouldn’t take long for an admin to respond. At the height of its popularity, HomeLAN boasted a membership base of around 2,500 ([HF] and [HA] combined, thousands more of regular players, 40 different games supported, and around 500 servers with 24/7 admin support.
To put it simply, gaming communities are the best way to combat toxicity. It always has been. But greedy developers and publishers have made it more difficult for such communities to grow and thrive within a gaming environment.
That’s the only real solution I’ve got for further combating toxicity in all of its forms. Unless developers and publishers decide to follow in the Chinese government’s footsteps. Then we are going to have some major problems. At the very least, I know that Bully Hunters and The Watch are not the answer to tackling the problem.
Update: In light of Activision’s Call of Groomers moment, the issue of child grooming in video games is coming more to the forefront and I would recommend you check out the following editorials:
PC Gamer Shows Political Bias and Pro-Child Grooming Stance Over The Sims 4 Trans Controversy?
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