I've received death threats just doing customer support at a previous job.
There's always going to be crazy douches out there who say crazy douche things. If we start legislating away free speech (and I realize this is a UK site where that's already happened even more than in the US) because of the 0.001% of psychotic douchebags then we're harming ourselves and not really protecting anyone.
Making death threats is already illegal, we don't need any more legislation about it.
That being said, the gaming community tends to be a fair bit more vitriolic when women are involved.
One of the reasons why even as a die-hard gamer I disassociate completely from the community that surrounds it. The only community I've found that doesn't make me red with rage is the Kerbal Space Program community.
The forum mods there tend to be utterly draconian in what they won't tolerate, and this kind of shit would get you IP-banned basically instantly. The discussion of games is generally a much higher-level thing and the community is relatively self-policed, too.
If you post something like this, it's easy peasy to get your ass arrested.
Some kind of community watch would go a long way towards clearing out a lot of the trash.
Since they are taking advantage of the fact that their target is not anonymous, then the best response is to pierce the veil of anonymity the attacker hides behind. Don't just speak up - out the attacker if you know them.
I'm wondering if we need to go back to that system, or perhaps come to some middle ground where if developers are going to talk publicly about games, they do it under pseudonym or something.
Oh right, school shootings make the news and are near terrorism and murdering a woman's family gruesomely is... normal?
[1] Justin Carter: http://freejustincarter.org
One of the Boston Bombers was a prolific Twitter poster, and I'm sure that factored in the decision to monitor Facebook activity in real-time.
We need some vigilantes that will turn up at the house of these people and dare them to say it face to face.
Combat is good too, albeit the weird camera angle is somewhat of an annoyance.
It reused the same areas and assets to the extreme. You literally spent all your time running around the same 5 or 6 dungeon maps with different entrances and exits. The combat was repetitive and the constant waves of enemies appearing out of thin air removed any tactical positioning or clever conservation of abilities.
Ms. Hepler was a creative force behind some of the strongest writing in the first Dragon Age, a game whose derivative (though thoroughly enjoyable) gameplay was enhanced dramatically by the depth, wit, and personality of its setting and characters.
The sequel, while (IMO) justifiably criticized for its dumbed-down gameplay, nevertheless retained a lot of the brilliant writing and storycraft tha made its predecessor so enjoyable. (AFAIK, Jennifer Hepler had nothing to do with the gameplay changes; she was responsible for the writing).
The relentless stalking and cyberbullying of Ms. Hepler, one of the franchise's true stars, is a damned shame. It was a shame a year ago, simply because of its immaturity. It's a damned shame now, because of its consequences.
If any studios out there are looking for writers, please seek out Jennifer Hepler ASAP.
Jennifer Hepler left BioWare this week to begin work on a book about narrative design and do some freelance work. Her most recent job title was senior writer on Dragon Age: Inquisition. But it was Dragon Age 2 that led to the death threats, the threats against her family and children and the harassment.
When asked if the harassment led to her depature, Hepler told Polygon "No, leaving Bioware was for family reasons. I am going to be working on a text book on narrative design among other game-related freelance projects."
All sides of it, has their own reasons, many of them legitimate... But if history is good in showing precedents, the end result of this will be countless deaths and destruction, before it gets better.
