Microsoft sent an email to the Xbox Division about Sexism at GDC 2016. They're not happy.

[AlTech]

Microsoft had a party recently at GDC 2016. Apparently Microsoft (more specifically Phil Spencer) thought it was
 

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unequivocally wrong

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He was so unhappy that he said several things regarding what happened:

 

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Spencer quickly denounced and disavowed his company's actions today, stating that the event "represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was not consistent or aligned to our values." He said the behavior "will not be tolerated" and that Microsoft "will do better in the future." It's not clear yet how the company will take corrective action or to what extent — Microsoft declined to comment on next steps as it investigates the matter, and plans to handle the matter internally.

 

 

This is the incident in question:

 

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The party, which showcased women in revealing costumes dancing on podiums, served to alienate several attendees who shared their discomfort and disappointment online.

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the email that was sent to all employees in the Xbox Division:

 

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How we show up as an organization is incredibly important to me. We want to build and reflect the culture of team Xbox - internally and externally - a culture that each one of us can represent with pride. An inclusive culture has a direct impact on the products and services we deliver and the perception consumers have of the Xbox brand and our company, as a whole.

It has come to my attention that at Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was absolutely not consistent or aligned to our values. That was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. This matter is being handled internally, but let me be very clear - how we represent ourselves as individuals, who we hire and partner with and how we engage with others is a direct reflection of our brand and what we stand for. When we do the opposite, and create an environment that alienates or offends any group, we justly deserve the criticism.

It's unfortunate that such events could take place in a week where we worked so hard to engage the many different gaming communities in the exact opposite way. I am personally committed to ensuring that diversity and inclusion is central to our everyday business and our core values as a team – inside and outside the company. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards and we will do better in the future.

 

 

Guys! Come on! Seriously? Why is this an issue in gaming? Women and Men can game. It is fine if both do, in fact I take that back. It's great for both to play video games if they are interested in video games.

 

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/18/11264930/xbox-gdc-2016-sexist-event-response

 

[DevilishBooster]

Well, I don't think anyone held a gun to peoples' heads and forced them to go to the party. If you don't like whats going on at the party, then don't be at the party. It's that simple. *sigh* This is the kind of bullshit that makes be want to throat punch someone. 

[Tieox]

If you don't like the mood of the party leave? why go all out in a tantrum just because it's Microsoft?

 

Really some people just look for anything to run their ists,ism's.

 

 

[AlTech]

2 minutes ago, Kierax said:

If you don't like the mood of the party leave? why go all out in a tantrum just because it's Microsoft?

 

Really some people just look for anything to run their ists,ism's.

 

 

I believe some girls and women who play videos games were their and tweeted to Microsoft telling them how it was appalling and things like that.

[Daegun]

Sexism? I swear that everything is called that nowadays. Inappropriate sure, but sexism?

[stconquest]

Someone pissed off daddy.  It is not a big deal, but it is quite "unprofessional".  XBox is a gaming division, not an escort service.  What is the purpose of hiring girls to show a lot of skin at this event?  To get guys to gawk at them?  I mean, lol. 

 

Yes, I am the guy that goes to a strip club with a group of friends and ends up alone sitting at a table and sipping my beer as they go off to throw money at them for lap dances.

[AlTech]

Just now, stconquest said:

Someone pissed off daddy.  It is not a big deal, but it is quite "unprofessional".  XBox is a gaming division, not an escort service.  What is the purpose of hiring girls to show a lot of skin at this event?  To get guys to gawk at them?  I mean, lol. 

 

Yes, I am the guy that goes to a strip club with a group of friends and ends up alone sitting at a table and sipping my beer as they go off to throw money at them for lap dances.

I agree this isn't some escort service. They're a gaming brand. They are supposed to be professionals who make products for gamers.

[Castdeath97]

Whether you think this is sexist or not that was pretty ridiculous and unprofessional from whomever organised this.

[KemoKa]

Did they threaten the girls doing the gig? Did they not have a choice about what they did at the event? Can they not decide for themselves what their standards are? Do they not have the mental capacity or integrity to stand up for themselves? If they were so concerned about being put in that position, they should have just not gone and MS would not have had them wearing revealing clothes in the first place. That was their decision. If they need others to stand up for them, then it's no wonder how they were convinced to dress up like that.

 

 

[KemoKa]

7 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I agree this isn't some escort service. They're a gaming brand. They are supposed to be professionals who make products for gamers.

 

7 minutes ago, ninninon said:

It's showcasing technology, it's not a strip club. 

They're a company whose entire marketing scheme consists of pandering to 12-year-old little boys who have just found out what boobies do, and to immature, aggressive, socially-inept, hormone-driven teenage boys who play CoD and can't talk to girls like normal people. Why is it a surprise that they decided to show scantily-clad women at their event? Obviously it was to appeal to them. Whether or not that is ethical is a different story.

[Aereldor]

7 minutes ago, KemoKa said:

Did they threaten the girls doing the gig? Did they not have a choice about what they did at the event? Can they not decide for themselves what their standards are? Do they not have the mental capacity or integrity to stand up for themselves? If they were so concerned about being put in that position, they should have just not gone and MS would not have had them wearing revealing clothes in the first place. That was their decision. If they need others to stand up for them, then it's no wonder how they were convinced to dress up like that.

Well, they probably paid to do it, and if that's alright with them, there's no harm in hiring women for a job like that.

The problem is how the people in charge of the event breached all professionalism to try to pander their male audience in immature ways. Stuff like this has me lashing out at the anime industry every minute, often in the company of equally chagrined viewers, who are mostly female. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the outcome at the event, except that only women happened to speak out about it. However, it's like @stconquest said- it might not have been sexist, but it was inappropriate.

 

However, I can't help but wonder how things would have turned out if they had both male and female performers dressed in revealing clothing. It would still be inappropriate, but I'm certain the word 'sexism' would vanish from the aforementioned complaints.

[Notional]

Sex sells because we are sexual beings. Get over it sex negative social marxists. You don't play Xbox games anyways. Just look at Sarkeesian who is factually incorrect about every single game she mentions. Oh remember when she recommended a game to her hundreds of thousands of twitter followers? And the dev said they didn't see any increase in their single to double digits weekly sales? What a joke.

 

Stop catering to people who are not part of your market, by apologizing to sex negative third wave feminists. You can never satisfy them anyways. They will just smell blood and go even more bat shit insane the next time. There's no winning with these people.

Luckily sales figures disprove the gamers are dead articles, that sparked Gamer Gate. The rationale was that the gaming market didn't have to cater to the nerds, but rather everyone. Problem is that the sales figures show that is not correct, and catering to these non nerds is just a waste of money and a shit load of problems.

[don_svetlio]

I honesty see this is a dumb way of marketing the Xboner to more underage socially-inept children who play CoD all day and can't even keep a straight face when talking to a women with their only interaction with a person from the opposite gender is soft-core porn. Microsoft is literally going to become gaming's first soft-core porn company.

[Aereldor]

4 minutes ago, KemoKa said:

They're a company whose entire marketing scheme consists of pandering to 12-year-old little boys who have just found out what boobies do, and to immature, aggressive, socially-inept, hormone-driven teenage boys who play CoD and can't talk to girls like normal people. Why is it a surprise that they decided to show scantily-clad women at their event? Obviously it was to appeal to them. Whether or not that is ethical is a different story.

I should probably have read this before replying to your previous post.

 

Well, therein lies the problem. The female fans at the event probably felt that Microsoft had chosen to pander to the majority of their fanbase, thrown ethics out the window, and ignored the other fans present at the event. In fact, unless all males at the event were as immature, I suspect the complaints weren't exclusive to females.

[stconquest]

10 minutes ago, KemoKa said:

 

They're a company whose entire marketing scheme consists of pandering to 12-year-old little boys who have just found out what boobies do, and to immature, aggressive, socially-inept, hormone-driven teenage boys who play CoD and can't talk to girls like normal people. Why is it a surprise that they decided to show scantily-clad women at their event? Obviously it was to appeal to them. Whether or not that is ethical is a different story.

Xbox is a division of a larger corporation.  If daddy says no, daddy means no.  Get it?  You may think it is okay to have stripper-like models shaking their shit everywhere (as do I), but MS says no.  There is no debate here.

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

Microsoft is literally going to become gaming's first soft-core porn company.

Are we forgetting the glorious bastards at CD Projekt Red? 

[KemoKa]

5 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Guys! Come on! Seriously? Why is this an issue in gaming? Women and Men can game. It is fine if both do, in fact I take that back. It's great for both to play video games if they are interested in video games.

If girls want to get into the tech field and gaming field, there's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so. Have you seen what John Carmack said about this? The industry is so starved of qualified individuals that they simply don't care who they hire, so long as they can do the job and do it well. But women need to do it of their own volition. They're not going to just materialize out of nowhere or be hired at Oculus or CD Projekt Red just because some stuck-up SJW or something or other complained that there aren't enough women in those companies.

 

Diversity for the sake of diversity is a stupid idea, if women can bring something awesome to the table (and I'm 100% sure that they can) then that's great. Bring ideas, work on them, pursue them. But don't expect us to change our method of doing things just because some team members are women. Don't expect to be treated more gently, because the tech industry ain't for the faint of heart, it isn't happy fairy land with flowers and roses and hearts. It's hard work. Until girls can properly step up to the plate as so many of them complain that not enough have, they will be relegated to positions like appealing to shallow, base little horn-dog minds.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, Aereldor said:

Are we forgetting the glorious bastards at CD Projekt Red? 

There's a difference between using that so as to make the world more realistic and making it the main focus

[Aereldor]

6 minutes ago, Notional said:

Sex sells because we are sexual beings. Get over it sex negative social marxists. You don't play Xbox games anyways. Just look at Sarkeesian who is factually incorrect about every single game she mentions. Oh remember when she recommended a game to her hundreds of thousands of twitter followers? And the dev said they didn't see any increase in their single to double digits weekly sales? What a joke.

 

Stop catering to people who are not part of your market, by apologizing to sex negative third wave feminists. You can never satisfy them anyways. They will just smell blood and go even more bat shit insane the next time. There's no winning with these people.

Luckily sales figures disprove the gamers are dead articles, that sparked Gamer Gate. The rationale was that the gaming market didn't have to cater to the nerds, but rather everyone. Problem is that the sales figures show that is not correct, and catering to these non nerds is just a waste of money and a shit load of problems.

It wasn't sexist, but the so called 'third wave feminists' you've branded them as were onto something. The event organizers chose to pander to a very specific portion of their fanbase in an immature manner. That's a breach of ethics even if said portion constitutes the majority of their fanbase, and helps them sell their stuff. Mr. Top Dog at Microsoft sniffed it out too, and I'm not surprised this is how he reacted to it.

 

Also, nobody brought up anything of the sort- Sarkeesian, 'sex-negative social marxism' or that gamers are 'dead articles'. The problem is the way they sell this stuff leaves out a certain portion of their audience, and even alienates them. Everyone has experienced this in some form, whether you're a veteran fan of Star Wars Battlefront and had your singleplayer campaign taken away because EA wants to pander to Call of Duty players, or when you get a graphical downgrade in The Witcher 3 because the developers chose parity with consoles over individually-optimized experiences.

 

Same principle- different examples.

[stconquest]

3 minutes ago, KemoKa said:

If girls want to get into the tech field and gaming field, there's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so. Have you seen what John Carmack said about this? The industry is so starved of qualified individuals that they simply don't care who they hire, so long as they can do the job and do it well. But women need to do it of their own volition. They're not going to just materialize out of nowhere or be hired at Oculus or CD Projeckt Red just because some stuck-up SJW or something or other complained that there aren't enough women in those companies.

 

Diversity for the sake of diversity is a stupid idea, if women can bring something awesome to the table (and I'm 100% sure that they can) then that's great. Bring ideas, work on them, pursue them. But don't expect us to change our method of doing things just because some team members are women. Don't expect to be treated more gently, because the tech industry ain't for the faint of heart, it isn't happy fairy land with flowers and roses and hearts. It's hard work. Until girls can properly step up to the plate as so many of them complain that not enough have, they will be relegated to positions like appealing to shallow, base little horn-dog minds.

I see you want to debate... okay:

 

You have 100 men at an event and 20 women attending.  At the event there are half naked girls dancing on pedestals.  Out of the 100 men, 1 get sexually charged and loses his inhibitions (alcohol).  At some point in the night, he isolates a female attendee and sexual assaults her.  Are the organizers of the event not ethically responsible for this occurrence to some degree?

 

It is unprofessional for a good reason.

[Prysin]

9 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

There's a difference between using that so as to make the world more realistic and making it the main focus

according the Anita Sarkisian, it is not..

 

[Aereldor]

3 minutes ago, stconquest said:

I see you want to debate... okay:

 

You have 100 men at an event and 20 women attending.  At the event there are half naked girls dancing on pedestals.  Out of the 100 men, 1 get sexually charged and loses his inhibitions (alcohol).  At some point in the night, he isolates a female attendee and sexual assaults her.  Are the organizers of the event not ethically responsible for this occurrence to some degree?

 

It is unprofessional for a good reason.

... The way I see it, they aren't responsible for his actions in the slightest- that's on him. What you're saying is equivalent for blaming a victim of sexual assault because she dressed in revealing clothing and 'sexually charged' her assailant. 

 

The reason it's unprofessional is it's a shallow marketing tactic- not because it uses sex to sell, but because it panders to young, sexually-deprived male audiences and ignores what the company is actually about- games. 

The word 'sexist' is misused in this argument, as are many others. The problem is that it leaves out a portion of the Xbox supporters and community, instead choosing to focus on a specific group in a way that does not appeal to everyone. Keep in mind that they aren't just 'Nancy Nobodies'- they're supporters of Microsoft who are entirely entitled to express their disappointment.

 

Then again, the way this seems to be framed, they're just mad it was only women up on stage in revealing clothing, and no male lumberjacks in denim shorts. I don't suspect this was the case, but the way it's framed alludes to it.

[stconquest]

Just now, Aereldor said:

... The way I see it, they aren't responsible for his actions in the slightest- that's on him. What you're saying is equivalent for blaming a victim of sexual assault because she dressed in revealing clothing and 'sexually charged' her assailant. 

 

The reason it's unprofessional is it's a shallow marketing tactic- not because it uses sex to sell, but because it panders to young, sexually-deprived male audiences and ignores what the company is actually about- games. 

The word 'sexist' is misused in this argument.

I am not arguing blame.  I am arguing what I would not want to promote at an event in public space;  not one based on the Xbox platform.  If I was an organizer and what I did enabled someone to do something vile, I would have to consider whether or not is was necessary in the first place.  Half naked girls at a Xbox party are not a necessity. 

 

I would feel bad if it was my event.

[minibois]

I'm all for equality, not making others look bad and that kind of stuff, but I dont feel like this is sexism or whatever. They are boothbabes, paid to dance and wear revealing clothing. It's not like they are being forced to do it or like they are being touched by everyone or whatever.

 

Yeah, it's not tasteful IMO, but should not be shunned.

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, stconquest said:

I am not arguing blame.  I am arguing what I would not want to promote at an event in public space;  not one based on the Xbox platform.  If I was an organizer and what I did enabled someone to do something vile, I would have to consider whether or not is was necessary in the first place.  Half naked girls at a Xbox party are not a necessity. 

 

I would feel bad if it was my event.

Perhaps, but you did say that the event organizers would be partially responsible for said individual's hypothetical actions of sexual assault- that hiring scantily-clad female performers could 'sexually charge' said male, resulting in sexual assault. If that were to happen, there would be no 'partial responsibility'- there would be one person to shoulder all of it.