I don't understand why they're defending his actions either. It's not appropriate behavior, and it is largely because of the factor of anonymity.

When I read the OP, I thought "BigBro442" was the idiot he was referring to, not the writer. She didn't do anything wrong or idiotic, and there has yet any convincing claim of the sort.

In any case, games will absolutely need controls in place to prevent people from being subjected to abuse like that. Shitty people like BigBro442 are in fact abundant in the gaming world, and every other group. Shitty people are everywhere, not just on the Internet. They're just tend to max out their shittyness like this because of the anonymity and lack of recourse.

Fascinating! I've made it clear both times that I was referring to people with those views. You claim you don't have those views, yet keep taking it as a personal attack. Whereas you flat out called me a moron and all I did was smirk when I read it.

Congrats on missing the point. People say to teach them those values to end those crimes, but fail to realize that they already teach those values and we still have rape, murder, and theft. Look at the Capone family, parents were strict Catholic, very moral parents from what I recall from history yet I believe their sons became criminals. Just teaching morals isn't going to curve any of the crimes, history shows this, but people still parrot that teaching morals somehow magically will fix crimes.

I can't believe you are blindly believing her claims. Upon searching no one can even find a user named BigBro442, but if she is so uncomfortable and took the time to write a blog entry outing the guy, why lie about his username to protect him? Gameranx's Editor-in-Chief even commented on how he was unable to find any user by that name. Can't condemn the actions of a person that may not even exist.

You highlighted what is wrong. A woman makes a claim and everyone rushes to fix it without trying to even verify if it is true. This is what pisses me off most, parts of it make it clear the writer of it is telling a bullshit story in order to paint gamers in a negative light, but people are rushing to her side.

For example:

The bold line makes the article seem agenda driven instead of fact driven. The second thing that makes me question it is the reactions she claims her husband and brother-in-law had. When my wife gets assholes bothering her on Facebook or other sites I run to her aid to cuss the guy out, hell I've even made accounts on sites I don't care for just to go defend her. I have trouble believing her husband just sat there laughing while she was yelling "Stop".

Then this:

She told him to stop, but then started making joking comments toward him while he was continuing to do it?

Lastly:

Unless it is a feature of the VR device, I've not seen any QuiVR gameplay that has a "teleport to username" feature. That leads me to believe she is either exaggerating or making it up.

Per her Medium profile:

Her being an author makes me question it even more.

After the UVA Rape claim being false, I'm no longer going to give a woman the benefit of doubt without evidence to back it up. Them being the "fairer sex" doesn't make them 100% honest or factual.

I'm atheist so that means nothing to me.

I disagree. In VR it must be harder to "distance" yourself from whatever is happening, since by design it is made to feel like you are physically there. Additionally, instead of a non-changing animation you could manipulate the hands of the avatar in much more provocative ways.

I do agree with perhaps what you were implying, no physical harm can be done directly over the internet, but I think it is folly to not at least consider the mental effects of this scenario to different people, especially those not already calloused from years of virtual experiences (e.g. the typical adult male gamer).

I can't vouch for the author's article but nevertheless I think this scenario is something for VR developers to consider when allowing interaction between players.

Disclaimer: I skipped most of the discussion, I also haven't bothered reading this article or the article colleagues posted in an office chat this morning. I also don't approve the behaviour of the said assaulter.

But come on, how many times have we been killed in an online game? Let alone violated, t-bagged, sweared at and I don't know what else. You don't like that, you don't play that, simple as that. If you run into a griever (and there's many of them out there) you just skip the round and find some other stranger to play with.

This whole thing gets more attention that in deserves. Yes, there are people out there who haven't grown out of puberty and behave themselves as jerks. Big surprise. I bet that he wouldn't do that in real life, I also bet that had he done that he would either receive a slap on his face or kick in the nuts.

GTA V is not a child's game what's the problem with people expressing themselves.

And if you're playing offline by yourself, then fine, do whatever the hell you want. But when you're playing with real people, the fact that it's a game doesn't mean that your actions have no effects. Is it really that hard not to be a jerk?

The difference in your scenario is that the situation doesn't happen constantly to the guy. It's a rare occurrence that he can just shrug off. When the harassment is continual however, as it is for a lot of women, it isn't so easy to just "get on with it."

People seem to be over-reacting to this article. The author isn't asking for the industry to be regulated. The only think along those lines that she says is that some rules need to be made, and that's actually a fair statement. New technologies usually come with new sets of rules, and there's no reason why VR is any different. At least one person in this thread has also said that the author should have just reported the incident and moved on, but you can't report someone if they're not doing anything wrong under the current rule set. So yes, rules do need to be made so that the behaviour can be reported.

edit:

It isn't just fine for men to do that one another. But just because we're mostly dumb and lazy enough to bother doing anything about it we shouldn't begrudge women the chance to do something to actually change shitty behaviour.

And yes, it is shitty behaviour. Anyone whose idea of fun is ruining other people's good time does't deserve to be allowed around other people.

To some people (and a lot more than you'd think), it's normal to go out on the weekend and start fights just for fun. Just because they think it's ok doesn't mean it is.

Maybe. To be honest, I don't understand American culture enough to if your Football culture is a cause of the problem or a symptom.

Point is that legally there is no difference, but this thread shows that once gender is brought in people gloss over a man's claim. "A woman's VR avatar was allegedly touched inappropriately? Sexual Harassment! A guy's VR was tea bagged? Not the same thing at all."

It's not laziness of men, it is how we are taught to rush to a woman's defense. Fortunately all the stories that blindly told the story of a woman being attacked, raped, etc. and then finding out it was 100% false has made me completely ignore that teaching. Look at the UVA Rape case, Wu, Quinn, Sarkeesian, or even more recent Chelsea Cain and see how people don't even wait for facts before crucifying someone in the court of public opinion.

See, the way journalism is supposed to work is the writer of the story gives both sides of the story while remaining as neutral as possible. Look at majority of the stories surrounding the above mentioned instances. They all are one sided for each person. The UVA case only told the alleged victim's story without contacting the fraternity. Wu, Quinn, and Sarkeesian stories all paint them as victims of harassment, but to my knowledge has never provided any proof of said harassment which would be a key point of any article that is supposed to give the facts. Then recently Chelsea Cain wrote for the comic Mockingbird, but she forced feminist agenda into it and the fans didn't buy it, but instead of admitting it was wrong she quickly played the victim, declared comics industry sexist and misogynist before deleting her account. I suspect all the articles about her will be one sided too and make comic fans look just as horrible as gamers.

Look at how the games media treats gamers. Gamers are consumers, so the media should be writing articles to give information to consumers to make a decision. No Man's Sky is the recent example of the media forsaking the consumers. No Man's Sky developer kept appearing in interviews promoting the game and making grandiose claims. When the game launched with almost none of the claims or people proving his claims wrong he quickly stopped replying to inquiries. Games media took to blaming gamers saying they built it up too much in their minds instead of taking responsibility for promoting and taking part in over hyping the game and not calling the developers out on their false promises.

This thread shows the same problem though. A woman writes a one sided personal blog entry claiming a gamer did wrong doing. Outs his username. People start falling all over themselves to believe her, apologizing to her for his actions, and even demanding action from the developers. When people try to verify facts, they can't find any user going by BigBro442 and she suddenly shuts down all her internet presence (including her site promoting her upcoming novel). Even in this thread people are condemning the actions based on her word and nothing else. On social media people are calling for petitions to get legislation changed to include VR interactions.

People say this isn't a big deal, except game developers are starting to condemn all gamers based off the words of women that have had no proof of their claims. People working for Nintendo have condemned gamers, people from Bioware (Manveer Heir went on a racist rant against white people and condemned gamers a few months back), Tim Schafer has condemned gamers. Bethesda, Rockstar, and Ubisoft are the only companies I've seen say they are for gamers. Ubisoft even posted a pic of their female staff members to show the industry wasn't anti-woman like Wu, Quinn, and Sarkeesian continue to claim.

Red Dead Redemption 2 just had a reveal teaser trailer with no details about the game. Sites went to attacking the game for not having any female outlaw characters to play as. We have hit a point where if you don't agree with the games media about what direction the industry needs to take you are labeled all the fun names and told you are terrible for liking the games that don't meet their "diverse" standards. Never thought I would see the day where diversity was the new buzzword to force control onto people.

We are approaching the point where games are no longer the creation of the developer, but rather a creation to meet a checklist to appease the morally offended.

[APPEND] Well I was right, they are doing one sided arguments blaming comic fans instead of forcing feminist ideals into the issue or poor sells due to it.

Alleged pages from Mockingbird:
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Why does it always need to be about men vs women. The fact that this happened to a woman is irrelevant. It shouldn't happen to anyone.

(First time actually searching for the name)

I also checked them for QuiVr in the game library. None of them have it (2 of them couldn't be checked because the profiles are private, but both have VAC bans from like 2 or 3 years ago ).

The Red Pill documentary sounds up my alley. I'm annoyed that I can't seem to download it at all. I hope they release it to the public soon (maybe Netflix).

I think that because it's an indie film and the topic is politically incorrect that she won't be able to fund distribution (but I guess that depends on how far the KickStarter money goes; I bet not far). It'll probably be a challenge to get back their initial investment. But I imagine it'll eventually be released as a free download if they can't distribute it (but I bet Netflix would take it at least).

I had a double take at that part, wondering where she suddenly gained this credential. There are plenty of great female comic book heroes, but SJW ideology is not something that makes them so.