Professional fighting games are on the verge of breaking into the big time as a spectator sport, with http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/04/over-2-million-watched-evo-2011-tourney-online/ tuning in to live streams of last August's EVO fighting game championship and millions more watching streamed fighting matches on http://www.twitch.tv/ every month. But a recent controversy over the overtly sixist treatment of a female competitor has some wondering if the fighting game community is really ready for prime time.

Anyone who has seen a fighting game tournament knows the community is well known for a casual, trash-talk, and bravado-filled atmosphere, where players actively try to psyche each other out for an advantage. But that's probably not enough to explain the way competitor Aris Bakhtanians treated teammate Miranda "SuperYan" Pakozdi during the http://crossassault.ign.com/, a Capcom-sponsored, reality show-style competition pitting two teams against each other in Street Fighter x Tekken matches for a $25,000 prize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SLDgPbjp0M from the first day of the tournament shows Bakhtanians, leader of the Tekken team, making sixual comments towards Pakozdi that range from crude to potentially abusive. Spurred on by commenters interacting via a live chatroom, Bakhtanians proceeds to guess at Pakozdi's bra size, suggest she take part in a mud wrestling match, expresses a desire to spy on her in the women's bathroom, suggests she wear a skirt he would buy for her, and threatens to smell her if she makes a mistake.

Pakozdi, for her part, is seen in the video laughing nervously at the comments, though she does say at one point "this is creepy." She later commented https://twitter.com/#!/Super__Yan that Bakhtanians' actions were "not funny at all" and that he had "made my life incredibly hard and hasn't helped me [deal with hecklers] at all. He made it way worse." Pakozdi also suggests via Twitter that when she confronted Bakhtanians about his behavior, it was "pretty obvious he just doesn't give a [censored].' (Pakozdi has publicly rejected interview requests)

Bakhtanians defended his behavior in an impromptu discussion with TwitchTV community manager Jared Rea on the fifth day of the tournament (the discussion starts around 1:45:00 in http://www.twitch.tv/iplaywinner/b/309876812). "Those are jokes and if you were really a member of the fighting game community, you would know that," he says of his behavior. "This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sixual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community—it'sStarCraft," he continued.

Bakhtanians was more circumspect in a prepared statement provided to Ars Technica after his behavior started drawing more attention around the Internet. "I understand that I said some controversial statements on the Cross Assault show, and a lot of people are deeply offended with what was said," he said in the statement. "I unfortunately used extreme examples in the heat of the moment and feel that my statements don't actually communicate how I feel. This is similar to what people say when they get into an argument with their girlfriend, and they say things that they deeply regret. I sincerely apologize if I have offended anyone."

Censoring the community?

Pakozdi responds to a comment made by Bakhtanians during the first day of the Cross Assault tournament, as seen on a live stream of the event
TwitchTV

But Bakhtanians also continued to argue against what he sees as efforts to try to sanitize the fighting game community by submitting players to what amounts to censorship. "What I was trying to communicate is that mild hostility has always been a defining characteristic of the fighting game scene," he said. "Back when arcades were more prevalent, people didn't like newcomers, and players needed to fight and pay their dues to get respect. The debate I was in was with a person who supported professional leagues, who have intent to censor the community to make it more accessible."

Is it just me or is that incredibly difficult to read?
Would you mind changing the font colour, please?

It's trash talk. It's SUPPOSED to offend people. Was it extreme trash talking? Yeah, but that's the point.

So is trash talk acceptable?
Sledging occurs in cricket but contraversial
Racist remarks can get a football player banned for a time
Generally it isn't acceptable in professional sports
If fighting games want to be seen as professional then the gamers will have to behave in a professional way

"I unfortunately used extreme examples in the heat of the moment and feel that my statements don't actually communicate how I feel. This is similar to what people say when they get into an argument with their girlfriend, and they say things that they deeply regret. I sincerely apologize if I have offended anyone."

"Those are jokes and if you were really a member of the fighting game community, you would know that. This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sixual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community—it's StarCraft"...

He talks like that to his girlfriends?



What a [censored] [censored].

I intensely dislike punks like this guy.

One can be competitive/antagonistic without being disrespectful.

This is why gamers need to agree on a spokesman to comunicate with the rest of the world, because we can't leave maniac six offenders to talk to women on their own without making us all look bad.

He talks like that to his girlfriends?

It's trash talk. It's SUPPOSED to offend people. Was it extreme trash talking? Yeah, but that's the point.

Wait wat. sixual harrassment is part of a culture? Great generation of gamers we're raising.

This is why gamers need to agree on a spokesman to comunicate with the rest of the world, because we can't leave maniac six offenders to talk to women on their own without making us all look bad.

Trash talking and sixism aside, I find it a really pathetic commentary on modern culture that people are seriously referring to video games as "spectator sports". It makes me feel like our culture is truly circling the drain.

Long story short, humans have always found entertainment in stupid things .

if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community—it'sStarCraft,"