A campaign against video-game bullies winds up falling far short of its goals.
Marketing agency mocked by online players for its squad of talented female participants
CHICAGO — It seemed like a killer idea: combat sexist harassment in online video games by unleashing hit squads of talented female players to slay the bullies.
But after marketing agency FCB Chicago launched “Bully Hunters” this month with a splashy livestream, the campaign was mocked by gamers, criticized by harassment experts and disowned by the companies it had enlisted as supporters. Within days, the agency shut it down. What went wrong? According to the agency, the demise of Bully Hunters was a case of good-intentioned naivete colliding with the idiosyncratic, often-aggressive world of online gaming. Others, though, say it was the result of cynical opportunism that exacerbated the problem the marketers were trying to solve.
Fighting harassment “is a real, honest-to-God issue, which unfortunately now has been tainted by this insincere, totally superficial effort,” said Rebecca Rothschild, a Chicago gamer and writer who has endured online bullying. “It bothered me on a lot of levels.”
Liz Taylor, chief creative officer of FCB Chicago, said Bully Hunters was a pro bono project for the agency, akin to campaigns it has done on handgun violence, colon cancer and Chicago’s bid for the second Amazon headquarters.
Researchers have established that in-game harassment is a pervasive problem, and Taylor said she has personal experience with it: Her teenage daughter endured online harassment so upsetting that she no longer enjoys gaming.
“There were a lot of people in the agency who had a passion around trying to make the gaming environment a safer, more inclusive place for everyone,” she said.
But one thing they didn’t have was experience. Keisha Howard, founder of a female-centric video game consultancy and event organizer called Sugar Gamers, said that was evident when she talked with FCB Chicago about the concept.
She said she was bothered by the idea that girls and women need saviors to protect them from gaming bullies. She also was concerned about the title FCB Chicago focused on — Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or CS: GO, a popular firstperson shooter game that is notoriously complex.
“They went for the biggest bear and didn’t do their research on the game,” Howard said. “It was easily torn apart by hardcore gamers who absolutely understand that title.”
Jesse Fox, an Ohio State University professor who has studied sexist behavior in video games, said Bully Hunters relied on a faulty premise — that harassers can be brought to heel through chastening defeat.
“We know from aggression studies in video games that when they get more frustrated they get angrier, and they’re more likely to (bully),” she said. “When someone comes in and wipes the floor with you, you’re not going to be amenable to hearing the message.”
She said more productive approaches would involve developing online tools to ban the most toxic offenders and encouraging players to tamp down harassment the moment it takes place, thus denying trolls the validation they crave.
Taylor said while the agency is still processing the hard lessons of the campaign, it is still committed to promoting an antiharassment movement among gamers.