Berggeist: look dude i don't wanna take the wind out of your sails or anything but
1) The first thing you linked is an opinion blog. The crux of its argument is that the report does not literally say "losers" or explicitly say men made "frequent, nasty" comments and that this study reveals "only a glimpse", which is kind of how science works. On top of that, the study actually does provide numbers on death threats and other such "nasty" comments, and also explicitly breaks these down, including an analysis on comments that would qualify as hostile sexism versus simply negative, neutral or positive. The study itself gives that it's not perfect and only had so much data to utilize, which is every study ever.
2) The second thing you link, from "nichegamer", hoo boy. Read their about me.
"We’re a website run by true gamers who love games. We have no room for jaded biases, politics or social agendas. We’re independently owned and answer to absolutely no one when it comes to what games we cover, and the way in which we cover them.
We’re proud to be based out of Philadelphia – the birthplace of American freedom, although we cover games from all over the world. We are committed to bringing you original content, insightful opinions and the full and accurate news without any fluff or agendas."
But the actual article is a desperate clutching at straws. It cries foul over the study being conducted in 2012, and that the game was old in 2012 (never mind that studies take time to process and I'm not sure why they even mention the game is old). It then argues that they didn't say "we obtained from the original data" rather than "we played", except the study actually fully divulges where the data came from and how they observed it.
Then the article comments that men were not examined for sexist comments. The study, however, gives that the only vocal players were all male. I can only assume nichegamer is now confusing homophobic with sexist, or just didn't actually read the study hard.
Nichegamer then complains that the article is not controlling for age, nationality, location or ethnicity, although how you're supposed to control for that in xbox live halo matches is beyond me. They complain that the authors of the study didn't examine players who didn't talk. Considering the study is specifically about talkers, and not people who have [I]no meaningful way to communicate[/I], why is this a shock?
Nichegamer then wanders into a personal anecdote about their college professor, and then complains that this study only found a small number of players making sexist comments. That's not what the study was about though. The study was about negative comments in general, with sexist comments specifically a subsection - and the point was still that it tended to correlate with players who were worse, and more often when the researcher "speaker" messages were said in a female voice.
Then it cries foul over the study mentioning ranking and using kill/death ratio in a cooperative game, except that if you actually take the time to read the study, it discriminates between people who aren't killing much and people who are actually dying often. This is something they should know if they actually took a stats course.
It complains it draws conclusions about "low-status males" in society, when the study is discussing status [I]as it applies within the game[/I]. The article ends on a defiant declaration that the data was manipulated to make people appear sexist, then narrowly focusing on specifically sexist comments rather than the apparent fact that those who spoke with a female voice tended to draw more negative comments in general, but the study is entirely forth-coming about the results, the limitations, and so on.
I would ask you to consider that nichegamer, whether they realize it or not, are in fact pushing an agenda of their own without actually realizing that they are. In fact, looking at their editorials, I would say that their bias is readily apparent.
Unfortunately they couldn't conduct the study as well as you critique an article about it.
The study does not mention the skills of the female players. Ah yes, that itself is a bit fishy. Or should I say fishing? They more or less went in trying to find something and probably cooked this ''science'' as a result. Did you ever consider that people may be yelling at her because she's bad or because she's better than them?
Also, how is this relevant to other games. How is this relevant to Natural Selection? You get orders in NS and who will you blame if you don't follow them? How does this apply to RTS teamgames? Does this study prove that if 2 zergs swarm a female protoss player on SC2 that the female player's team mate would blame her?
For ''scientific'' study, this seems more like an exercise in armchair social media ''online social experiment''.