Blizzard Techs Talk Login Times, Not Gay Rights

Shane Dabiri and John Lagrave took an interview with Eurogamer, and used the opportunity to talk about the login problems that have been plaguing World of Warcraft since Christmas. As techs, they're not there to talk about the ongoing discussion involving Gay rights in their game world. Kotaku, however, is not under any kind of restriction, and reports on legal movement against the company by Lambda Legal. The group is organized around procuring civil rights for people in the GLBT community, and sent a strongly worded letter to Blizzard's legal team. From that letter: "We are very concerned that Blizzard's policy, as expressed in the foregoing statement, discriminates against LGBT gamers. Although preventing harassment is an admirable goal, a requirement that LGBT people remain invisible and silent is not an acceptable means of reaching that goal." Blizzard has already removed the warning from the player in question, saying that it was an 'unfortunate interpretation' of their EULA.

Argh!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Keep your goddamn politics out of my game. I play to escape reality dammit...

Nuff said.

Re:Argh!

[taskforce (866056)]

That's the problem. Gay people play the game to escape reality as well... Gay Rights shouldn't be politics, there is no issue, unless you question people's personal freedoms to make their own choices which have no effect on other people.

The Religious Right has made this a political issue, when in fact it is not even an issue.

Re:Argh!

[evilned (146392)]

Then kick the christian guilds out too. I don't want their religion in the game either. Same if an Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Flying Spaghetti Monster guild starts advertising too. Till then, this was just plain a dumb move by Blizzard.

Re:Argh!

[TopShelf (92521)]

Let's face it, for many gamers, this is about all the sexuality they're going to encounter on a regular basis...

Re:Argh!

[_Sprocket_ (42527)]

After all, how does sexuality come into play on WoW? This shouldn't even be an issue and for those who need a MMORPG as an outlet for sexual expression there isn't much to be said in their favor.

Have you ever seen a female Night Elf dance (or many other races for that matter)? Sexuality is coded in to the game. And, of course, given the nature of the average audience... players will push what can be done with those animations.

But it doesn't have to be so purile. Ever hear of in-game weddings? Any time RP-oriented players get together, a wedding is bound to happen and WoW is no exception. Now while marriage isn't all about sex, sexuality is certainly a part of it. And in fact, the whole recent hullabaloo seems to have stemmed from a in-game same-sex marriage.

Sexuality is a part of us - it's hard-coded in to our being. It is little wonder that in any environment with some degree of freedom, sexuality surfaces. And that's even in environments that don't code it in - unlike WoW.

One last point - I do tend to agree to a certain extent. I'm not very interested in sexuality in game. Some joker with a half-naked dancing Night Elf on a mailbox is a sure sight of a immature player. And I've never felt any inclination to be part of an in-game wedding (or get involved with anyone's romantic tryst RP). But at the same time, I do understand that some players will be inclined to do these things even if I choose not to play along.

Re:Argh!

[NemosomeN (670035)]

It should be noted that a guild of tennis players or a guild of Buffy fans would not be tolerated, either. (Note Giant Communist Robots being forbidden). Any group with real-world ties is frowned upon.

Where's the outrage?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Final Fantasy XI has full in-game marriage, complete with wedding dress, rings, and a ceremony. However, Final Fantasy XI refuses to allow gay couples to get married.

And yet, there's been no complaint about this. No one cared. "It's just a fantasy game."

I guess it's only because WoW is so popular that we're hearing about this in the first place. It's just people purposely trying to raise trouble to get "their issue" into the press. Unfortunately, it's working.

Blizzard shuns gay-ness?

[An anonymous Frank (559486)]

(I a male adult of the bisexual persuasion, who recently began playing WoW with my boyfriend, who is gay himself.)

The virtual world offered (for a fee) to Blizzard's customer base, however removed from reality, is very much populated by real players, (script farmers notwithstanding,) which have a given sexual orientation, whether or not this fact is relevant to the actual game play. In this game, individuals will find all sorts of reasons to relate to each other and/or form guilds, possibly based on real-world geographical proximity, shared/anecdotal game history, stereotypical familiarity or whatever they might see as relevant criteria.

While playing the game, it didn't take long before I learned about fun things like the "/kiss", "/hug" and other such commands, and I also quickly confirmed that these actions were possible between any players, regardless of perceived gender or race. On the other hand, MSN Messenger's original emoticons assumed that a hug was given by a boy, and returned by a girl.

Which of these two services may be adding some restrictions of expression, knowingly or not, to its users?

Now, let us imagine that the next time I play this game, I should decide to form a new guild, or join an existing one, based on a common interest in photography. Which means that as we all wait endless minutes while everyone gets ready for the next raid, we can all chat about something we have in common, photography, something that others around us might be at least mildly interested in, and might even have something to share with the other guild members as well.

Obviously, if I simply lacked any interest in photography, I'd join some other group, or simply keep marching on my way, because in the end, I am playing this particular game in order to have a little fun, period.

Re:G/L/B Rights

[bersl2 (689221)]

WoW is not a discussion board, where speech is expected to be on-topic; Slashdot is.

Re:G/L/B Rights

[Liselle (684663)]

You might have a valid argument when GNAA posts start getting blammed so that nobody can see them. But as long as people can still see the mess at a -1 threshold, I don't care. The moderation system is not about freedom to be heard, it's about allowing people to allow gems to float to the surface of the cesspool.

Re:G/L/B Rights

[theStorminMormon (883615)]

I'm not sure if it's accurate to say "gay people existed in medieval times".
In the past people weren't gay - they just either did or didn't have sex with members of the same sex. It was considered something you did (or didn't do) and not a matter of personal identity. The ancient greeks, for example, would probably not have made sense of the question "are you gay or straight?".

So it's entirely possible that modern homosexuality - far from being as old as the human race - is actually a fairly modern construct. Personally I think that the discinction between "gays" and "straight people" is largely artificial and that sexuality (defined as inclination, not as actual partners) is more of a spectrum than a binary decision. It's for social and political reasons that in recent history the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" have been applied to people and not to behavior or inclination.

Anyone know of anything additional about this?

-stormin

Re:G/L/B Rights

[Gulthek (12570)]

Yes.

The Experience of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages [fordham.edu] by Paul Halsall, 1988.

Homosexual sex was widespread in the Middle Ages and there is abundant information on what church writers and secular legislators thought about it. Shoddy or partisan scholarship and a distinctly modern disdain of homosexuals by scholars until recently marked much of the discussion of the history of this medieval homosexuality. Since 1955, and especially since 1975, much work has been done that is of reasonable quality [1]. The concentration has tended to be on the Church's, or society's, attitude to homosexuality. This paper takes a different tack and looks at the personal experience in the Middle Ages of those we would now call homosexuals and the structures in which they were able to experience their sexuality. Their experience fits in with the wider experience of sexuality in Middle Ages and this also will be considered. Naturally, we can say little about what sexuality felt like for individuals, but a possible framework for their experience can be reconstructed from existing sources. This will be, necessarily, a framework for the experience of homosexual males for significant information exists only about men and boys [2].

The main focus of the present paper will be on the experience of homosexuality for individuals and on what can be gleaned about the subcultures or other kinds of social networks homosexuals belonged to in diverse medieval periods. There are theoretical issues to face in this inquiry, about the concept of homosexual and homosexuality, and the overall place of homosexuality in the study of medieval sexuality. Only after looking at these will we move to a consideration of sources and the uses that can be made of them. A examination of the often ignored issue of why people engaged in homosexual activities will help us to focus better on the core of this paper which will be to consider those medieval societies in which we have knowledge of homosexuality and to see if they fit into any typology. The typologies looked at are of the types of homosexuality we can see present and at the social contexts in which this sexuality was expressed. ...

Very clearly there were distinct types of sexual activity in different periods and areas, but these activities do not seem to accord with any particular social organization of homosexuals: there was a pederastic emphasis in the Spain, with a developed subculture, and there were relationships conducted on a more equal basis in areas where there is little evidence of homosexual social organization. What has become clear is that homosexuality existed in immensely varied forms in the Middle Ages. A global approach to the whole period is of some use and interest, but to try to understand the lives of homosexual individuals it is necessary to consider their local circumstances and the structures in which they lived.

Homosexuality [stanford.edu].

With the decline of the Roman Empire, and its replacement by various barbarian kingdoms, a general tolerance (with the sole exception of Visigothic Spain) of homosexual acts prevailed. As one prominent scholar puts it, "European secular law contained few measures against homosexuality until the middle of the thirteenth century." (Greenberg, 1988, 260) Even while some Christian theologians continued to denounce nonprocreative sexuality, including same-sex acts, a genre of homophilic literature, especially among the clergy, developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Boswell, 1980, chapters 8 and 9).

The latter part of the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, however, saw a sharp rise in intolerance towards homosexual sex, alongside persecution of Jews, Muslims, heretics, and others. While the causes of this are somewhat unclear, it is likely that increased class conflict alongside the Gregorian reform movement in the

Re:G/L/B Rights

[theStorminMormon (883615)]

While I appreciate the source material i think you may have failed to really appreciate my point. I was simply pointing out that there is a difference between:
A. homosexuality as behavior
and
B. homosexuality as personal identity

I am of the opinion (albeit I'm no expert and have a lot to learn on the topic) that while A is universal B is a relatively modern pheonomena. Your own sources seem to corroborate this. Examples:

Homosexual sex was widespread in the Middle Ages and there is abundant information on what church writers and secular legislators thought about it.

Sex is the action, and has nothing to do with identity.

those we would now call homosexuals

Meaning that they weren't so-called at the time. Was this because of oppression - or was it because the idea of associating sexual preference with identity and not with just behavior had not yet arisen?

Very clearly there were distinct types of sexual activity in different periods and areas, but these activities do not seem to accord with any particular social organization of homosexuals:

Again - evidence of the action but not of developed identity-awareness. Subcultures may eventually provide evidence that this type of homosexuality did exist, but your articles haven't established that yet.

With the decline of the Roman Empire, and its replacement by various barbarian kingdoms, a general tolerance (with the sole exception of Visigothic Spain) of homosexual acts prevailed.

Again - they key word is acts. This is still the behavior-centric conceptualization.

The subtext throughout all of these articles is simply this: people were having gay sex in the middle ages, and they were having gay sex in the Roman era. That's fine and I think it's historically unarguable. Even the Bible refers to homosexuality going back to Soddom. So that's not in question.

But what these articles all discuss is the behavior. This is not the same thing as the socio-cultural identity, and that's what I believe is a recent development.

I'm not falling into the trap of thinking that people in the middle ages were somehow fundamentally different than we are now. Evolution doesn't work that fast. But modern societies do tend to have distinguishing philosophical trends and I think this is one of them.

-stormin

Re:G/L/B Rights

[theStorminMormon (883615)]

Let me put it to you this way.

Take a question of preference and of action. Say the question is "do you like strawberries?" You might like them, I might not (ok - who doens't like strawberries? but it's an analogy). So you like strawberries and you eat them. Do we have a name for that in our society? No - we just say that you eat strawberries and you like them. A movement? Not that I know of. An agenda for strawberry-eaters? Well, I guess to eat strawberries.

No consider a similar question of preference and of action. Do you like meat? Do you eat meat? In this case we DO have a name: we have vegans and vegetarians for people who don't eat meat (or animal products, depending on how hard core you are). If you happen to not eat meat one day - are you a vegetarian? If you're a vegan and you don't realize there's animal products in jello and eat it - do you stop being a vegan?

See what I mean? In this case we have a cultural identity that is based on an action or preference but then takes on a life of it's own. What I'm saying is that historically being gay was kind of like eating strawberries. It didn't mean anything other than what it meant. Now being gay is like being a vegetarian - it's not about what you do (or want to do) anymore - it's about who you are.

-stormin

Re:G/L/B Rights

[Pendersempai (625351)]

You're the one confusing MMORPG with reality. The characters in the game are part of Blizzard's world; the players who control them are not. No one is suggesting that Blizzard should have to create or accommodate gay characters, but they sure as shit should accommodate gay players. And it is the players seeking a gay-friendly playing environment that Blizzard has reprehensibly shut down.

Re:G/L/B Rights

[keraneuology (760918)]

Are only gay-friendly guilds allowed or will staunch fundamentalist Christian guilds be equally tolerated?

Re:G/L/B Rights

[vux984 (928602)]

I've always wondered what a staunch fundamentalist christian is doing playing a game with people pretending to be undead necromancers worshipping made up God's, wandering the countryside killing others.

Seems as out of place as an AA meeting in a liquor store.

Re:G/L/B Rights

[nickname225 (840560)]

I'm a lawyer - although civil rights is not my area of specialization - and it's not that simple. The world of "I own it & I can damn well do as I please" is long gone. A court would most likely find the WoW is a "public accommodation" and since it engages in Interstate commerce and uses the modalities of Interstate commerce it is subject to non-discrimination laws. However - Gay is not a protected class of people so Blizzard can do as they want with regard to gays - but just because you own something doesn't mean you can set ALL the rules.

I think you misunderstand the case a bit

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

Blizzard has not said Homosexuals can't play their game. On the contrary, they want everyone playing their game. What they've said is you can't make a blatantly homosexual guild, as in the name, and you can't recruit on the general board based on that. They impose similar restrictions on religions, politics, straight sex, etc. The idea is that it's a role playing game, and real life factions are supposed to stay out of it to a degree. They don't want a "republicans only" guild any more than a "gays only" guild, though they want both groups playing the game.

Re: legal action

[Drachemorder (549870)]

Exactly. I think if one wants to truly be "tolerant" then one must also tolerate other people's intolerance. The fact is that everyone is intolerant of something; the people who make "tolerance" their biggest issue are often the very same people who seek to suppress those who don't agree with their idea of tolerance.

Re: legal action

[GreyyGuy (91753)]

So they can setup a policy that every avatar has to look like a naked 11 year old and it is perfectly legal?

Of course not. They have to abide by laws, if they are behind closed doors or not. And the fact that they are a private service doesn't affect that. They can't say no women are allowed to play. They can't discriminate on the basis of religion. And they can't say you are not allowed to say a guild is GLBT friendly because it might offend people when the game's chat has the word "fag" show up more then any other single word.

In fact, based on some things I've read, Blizzard might even be in violation of their own agreement by restricting a GLBT friendly guild when other religious guilds actively promote themselves as such. Both could easily attract people wanting to cause problems, yet only one is warned.

Re: legal action

[Alcilbiades (859596)]

Any restaurant can retain the right to refuse service to anyone. Usually it is posted in big bold letters in the entrance. However, YOUR comment takes the argument way out of context. Blizzard doesn't refuse anything to homosexuals. They do require that guilds not post Political/sexual/non-game/etc issues for recruitment on their general forums pages or in game spam in general chat.

Honestly how god damned hard is this to understand. Blizzard won't allow you to recruit in general chat based on being a republican, stripper, democrat, straight guys only, ETC. Their opinion has been if it is non game related keep it inside your guild halls aka your own forum. Blizzard has even stated it is fine for guilds to recruit based off of previous things on Blizzards RECRUITMENT forum but not on the general forum.

Personally I think it was a group of disgruntled homosexual gamers that wanted attention so they broke the rules and then claimed it was blizzard's fault. It wasn't the only reason this is still in the news is because it is easier to blame blizzard than it is the minority. Sure they are a minority but they still broke the rules. I personally hope blizzard bans the people who posted the recruitment based off of sexual orientation in the general forum. It is out of place an unwanted. If I want to find a guild I can go to the recruitment forum.

Re:Rights? What Rights?

[richg74 (650636)]

I have the right to refuse service to anyone whom I deem, so long as the service is considered a private and not a public service.

This is wrong, as a matter of fact. I realize that you are Canadian; but in the US, there are statutory limitations on the absolute freedom of private contracts, in addition to the common law exclusion of contracts contrary to public policy.[1] There are, for example, Federal laws prohibiting employment or housing discrimination on the basis of race; and state and local laws that also prohibit various forms of class-based discrimination. Some of these apply specifically to sexual orientation. At least some of these laws apply to business conducted with the public, not just that of public entities, like school boards.

The courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of these laws, on the basis that there is a compelling public interest in having a fair society. In fact, Colorado tried to amend its state constitution to prohibit any legislation protecting civil rights on the basis of sexual orientation. The US Supreme Court ruled that the state amendment violated the US Constitution.

[1] The common-law exclusion means, for example, that a contract to commit a crime is unenforcable. I would be very surprised if this does not apply in Canada also.

Re:Blizzard was already trying to do the Right Thi

[Pendersempai (625351)]

And since when does one have the right to play LBBT characters in a role playing game for heaven's sake?

One doesn't, and this isn't what these players sought. They sought a group of players who don't spew sexuality invective like it's punctuation. Which, I have to say, seems entirely reasonable to me.

Re:Your rights stop where mine start

[Pendersempai (625351)]

Right... but the reality is that people in WoW derogatorily use "gay" and "fag" all the time in the game.

Suppose instead people shouted things like "nigger" when something didn't go their way... that they made frequent supportive allusions to the KKK... that when someone did something they didn't like, they called him a "darky"...

Would it be unreasonable for a group of black players to try to organize a black-friendly group to play with so they wouldn't have to listen to rampant bigotry continually? Or would you protest this as just bringing real-life politics into your game?