Some Home users’ custom avatars are being harassed, to the point where one female PS3 Home player may quit the service entirely. In a post on the official PlayStation.com forums last month, forum member Whoef said her roommate was “sexually assaulted near the Festive Tree while she was helping others with the puzzle.”
Not being a user of Home myself, I couldn’t tell you what fruit the Festive Tree’s mysterious puzzle would provide, but I’m pretty sure it was not someone’s avatar bouncing up and down behind you all day. Whoef said her roommate would move and the “harasser would follow. Each time trying to get behind her and use the crouch gesture.”
Her roommate hasn’t spoken up for herself (for fear of further being crouched on?) but that hasn’t stopped Whoef’s thread from exploding into a 122-reply discussion about harassment in the virtual world. Crouching doesn’t exactly seem obscene, but like the tea-bagging movement of first-person shooters (not to be confused with the United States’ Tea Party/Tea Bagger protests of last year), I guess it’s all in the meaning and this user felt seriously harassed.
Apparently, the harassment of this particular user has gone on for some time. Says Whoef, “The harasser was warned multiple times and laughed at the thought that someone might report him for his actions, which was eventually done, and also, I’m proud to say, by other bystanders.” Whoef went on to call for a virtual restraining order — banning the harasser from the same instance as the victim — and the creation of a Home jail for serial harassers.
These solutions sound a bit over the top, and Whoef admits that, but it raises an exceedingly interesting question; Is it really sexual assault if it happens in a virtual world? One Australian ethics expert says yes.
Australia’s Daily Telegraph picked up the story on Monday and ran it with the massive headline “Fears over online sex assaults”. The article raised concerns these virtual sexual assaults could translate into real-world emotional scars. In it, Dr. Jessica Wolfendale, a post-doctorate researcher at the University of Melbourne, said gamers don’t draw a strong distinction between themselves and their avatars. Like Jake Sully in James Cameron’s Avatar, they get all wrapped up in the other world. So, Wolfendale said, avatars are a form of self-expression in the game. Essentially, I am my avatar and my avatar is I.
If that’s the case then, an accusation of sexual assault could be pretty serious, and Whoef’s roommate’s incident doesn’t seem to be isolated. A quick scan of posts on the official PlayStation forums reveals a number of users dealing with “creeps” in Sony’s Home.
In one thread, user ThE_ChEErLeaDeR1 wrote on Jan. 13, “So I went on Home for the very first time all excited to explore and look at all the different stores, and some guy starts following me around. He kept going in front of me every time I stopped saying hi asking where I was from and how old I was … He then proceeded to message me twice harassing me asking how old I was and what not.”
So what’s a massive game company like Sony to do about virtual “sexual assaults”? What about users? Right now it seems the only options the harassed have are to report the offensive user or leave.
“She hasn’t decided whether she will go back into Home,” Whoef said of her roommate. “At this point she is rather disappointed with the whole thing and I don’t blame her at all.”
What do you think about this issue?
Sources: Official PlayStation forums, NeoGaf
