[quote]Belamire who goes by a pseudonym to protect her privacy, was playing a game called QuiVr on her brother-in-law's HTC Vive VR system. She was shooting zombies with strangers in QuiVr's multiplayer mode when another player began to virtually rub her chest.
"I've been groped in real life, once in a Starbucks in broad daylight. I know what it's like to happen in person," Belamire, 30, told CNNMoney. "The shock and disgust I felt [in QuiVr] was not too far off from that."
Another user, BigBro442 had apparently caught on that she was a woman because her mic was on and her voice was streaming through to the virtual world.
Belamire yelled "Stop!" as BigBro442 grabbed her. That made things worse.
"He chased me around, making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest. Emboldened, he even shoved his hand toward my virtual crotch and began rubbing," she wrote in a Medium post about the incident last week.
Belamire's post caught a lot of attention online, the most disturbing being strangers who told her she was making a lot of fuss about nothing.
"Please explain how someone can be assaulted in any form using VR. This seems to be someone whining just to whine" was a common refrain on Twitter. Belamire temporarily suspended her Twitter account as a result.
Belamire said she's "more disturbed by the backlash than the VR incident itself."
"It's not real, therefore it's OK; this is the amoral substructure of gaming culture. This, far more than anonymity, is the source of much gender and racial harassment on the internet," wrote sociologist and gaming critic Katherine Cross in a paper titled "Ethics for Cyborgs."
[...]
Indeed, Belamire told CNNMoney that the hand that stroked her felt "very lifelike. You can make the fingers move in really realistic ways."
[/quote]
Bonus:
[quote]"The men that make these games genuinely don't seem to understand that it's sexual assault," game developer Brianna Wu told CNNMoney. "Women barely work on these teams, so there's no voice of conscience."
Wu cited Playstation VR's Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 as an example; the game lets users grope a bikini-clad virtual woman who is protesting, glorifying sexual assault.[/quote]
[url]http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/24/technology/virtual-reality-sexual-assault/[/url]
I ,, I just facepalm
BigBro442 is very naughty
That is honestly hilarious, I imagine that guy was laughing his ass off.
[quote]"The men that make these games genuinely don't seem to understand that it's sexual assault," game developer Brianna Wu told CNNMoney. "Women barely work on these teams, so there's no voice of conscience."[/quote]
what though
How do people like this even live. It seems like they'd have a breakdown just from stepping outside.
[QUOTE]Belamire yelled "Stop!" as BigBro442 grabbed hhe.[/QUOTE]
holy fuck ahahaha the name just makes this so much better
there aren't even bodies in the game, just floating hands and a helmet:
[url]http://store.steampowered.com/app/489380/[/url]
Did I suddenly drop into 2014?
I got raped in virtual reality.
I was playing Rec Room and some guy was lying on the ground. I joined him and then someone else came over and started humping me. Then the guy that was lying on the ground got up and started tea bagging my face.
Safe to say I had a great time.
of course Brianna Wu is in the middle of it
[quote]game developer Brianna Wu[/quote]
Apparently making a single shit phone game years ago makes you a game developer. Next you're going to tell me working for Buzz Feed makes you a journalist.
Belamire is a bitch and needs to stop being upset.
Jesus Christ, Wu sure does get around these days.
[QUOTE=Dantz Bolrew;51260586]Jesus Christ, Wu sure does get around these days.[/QUOTE]
she's probably getting people to publish these articles, somehow
[QUOTE=Naught;51260600]she's probably getting people to publish these articles, somehow[/QUOTE]
Well considering Hilary Clinton retweeted her multiple times, I wouldn't be surprised if that alone helped.
It's incredibly stupid to compare this to sexual assault. Online, I can always leave the server. I can't just decide to get off a speeding train.
So I have a question. "Women barely work on these teams, so there's no voice of conscience." Women don't work on these games, therefore, there's no voice of conscience. So, this logically means that men do not posses a conscience to voice.
Brianna Wu is a transsexual. At which point in the transition process did she attain a conscience? Did she gain it when she finally figured out she was really a woman, or was she simply born with a conscience and that meant she naturally was a woman? Did any potential surgery or medication used to ease the transition also have the side-effect of embedding a conscience into her soul?
(I wish to clarify that I'm not using this to make fun of transsexual people, or people making the transition, or people opting or not opting to undergo HRT or surgery. These people are brave. I am only using this to frame how ridiculous her comment sounds.)
[QUOTE]Indeed, Belamire told CNNMoney that the hand that stroked her felt "very lifelike. You can make the fingers move in really realistic ways."[/QUOTE]
really
[t]http://i.imgur.com/hnLRCmJ.png[/t]
[QUOTE]Indeed, Belamire told CNNMoney that the hand that stroked her felt "very lifelike. You can make the fingers move in really realistic ways."[/QUOTE]
Even if there were bodies in the game, I'm pretty sure a person would be pulled out of the immersion as soon as the hand started phasing through you.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;51260633]So I have a question. "Women barely work on these teams, so there's no voice of conscience." Women don't work on these games, therefore, there's no voice of conscience. So, this logically means that men do not posses a conscience to voice.
Brianna Wu is a transsexual. At which point in the transition process did she attain a conscience? Did she gain it when she finally figured out she was really a woman, or was she simply born with a conscience and that meant she naturally was a woman? Did any potential surgery or medication used to ease the transition also have the side-effect of embedding a conscience into her soul?[/QUOTE]
Shhhh! Just let TERFs think women are fundamentally better than men somehow!
While I'm not surprised about the backlash, I'm still disappointed. The people quoted in the article are definitely misguided in thinking that this the developers' fault and CNN is dumb for thinking this is newsworthy, but let's be honest. She was sexually harassed, which merits the kind of anger and disgust she has, [url=https://medium.com/athena-talks/my-first-virtual-reality-sexual-assault-2330410b62ee#.k4al47cue]and if you actually read the post she made[/url], none of it is directed at anyone but the other player.
It's pretty funny imo but at the same time developers should probably guard against this sort of thing. Overreaction or not, multiplayer interaction in VR can feel pretty real and if nothing else I can see how someone would be irritated by this kind of behavior.
why didn't she just take the headset off
[editline]a[/editline]
or like, leave the game
or ANYTHING
[QUOTE=Waffle Lord;51260635]really
[t]http://i.imgur.com/hnLRCmJ.png[/t][/QUOTE]
I was willing to accept, like, a phantom limb kind of explanation here. Famous experiment, you have your real hand on a table and a fake one right next to it, shaped to look like a part of your body. So they rub a brush on the real hand and the fake hand, and subjects report they felt the sensation on both hands. Then they swing a hammer down on the fake hand and subjects report feeling pain.
So I thought it could be a situation like that, which would explain her sensations. The body sees an analogue for the body and fills in the blanks. But not even that is there. So I'm more than a little skeptical about her account.
But even then I don't care, she said she experienced sexual assault in person in the article and it could have been like a PTSD thing. Fine, that's fair enough, though it doesn't necessarily mean she was sexually assaulted because a person being triggered isn't sexual assault.
I'm more interested in the amazing quote by Wu.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;51260524]what though[/QUOTE]
I thought I heard the last of Brianna Wu, no such luck I guess. For the uninitiated, she's the daughter of wealthy parents who made an iPhone game featuring characters wouldn't even pass her own feminist character design standards. She allegedly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars making it and had to set up a kickstarter for the PC port which released years late. She tried to bring the game to Steam but was kicked off for censoring reviews and false-flagging harassment, at one point [U]she forgot to log off her developer account[/U]. She's famous for using her gender to hide from criticism because she feels entitled to success and blames her failures on sexism.
[t]http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/911/071/09d.jpg_large[/t]
The media probably doesn't realize how loosely scrapped together most games are. Game developers generally have much bigger fish to fry when shipping a game than worrying about virtual "sexual assault". How are you even supposed to prevent something like that in a VR game anyway?
Unless the game specifically facilitates these sorts of situations, it's not really the dev's problem. This is just what happens when you interact with anonymous strangers online shared space. You as the user can choose to take off the headset if something becomes uncomfortable.
[QUOTE=Paramud;51260653]but let's be honest. She was sexually harassed, which merits the kind of anger and disgust she has[/QUOTE]
No?
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;51260598]We're living it baby. Truly living in the future now.
The question is how does one propose that the police track and arrest these virtual rapists?[/QUOTE]
Game developers should probably just be the ones to deal with this sort of stuff. Ban for harassment like usual when it's reported, provide tools to get rid of people that are fucking with you. The law is already pretty adequate to deal with this stuff imo, where police only really need to get involved for extreme circumstances, such as credible rape/death threats.
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