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Owner of 'Gaymer' trademark sends cease and desist to Reddit
In 2007, owner of Gaymer.org Chris Vizzini announced his intent to trademark the term "gaymer," sparking a community controversy: Even though not everyone affiliated with the word itself, it was a commonly used bit of jargon, similar to "pwn" or "noob." Did Vizzini have the right to trademark such a common word?Legally he did. In March 2008, Vizzini's trademark on "gaymer" passed registration and it is live today. The trademark applies to online communities, "hosting and maintaining an online website for others to discuss, receive and disseminate information concerning video games," specifically. In the interest of protecting his mark, Vizzini today sent a cease and desist letter to Reddit community /r/gaymers, which has more than 16,500 members, claiming infringement.Reddit admins don't plan to ban the subreddit, but it will need to rename or find a compromise with Vizzini. This is an "unprecedented" situation for Reddit, but it is a serious problem, admin spladug writes:"I informed the mod team of /r/gaymers that we'd received a cease and desist letter for infringement of the 'gaymer' trademark and that our legal counsel had informed us that the letter presents a real threat that they would sue reddit. I let them know so that they could start planning how to respond (including seeing if there's any way for them to work things out with the owner of the trademark)."Vizzini says he sent the cease and desist because, as a trademark holder, he has to defend his mark or risk losing it. He says he emailed Reddit twice asking for the community to change its name, but got no response. "I started Gaymer.org in 2003 and began to build Gaymer as a brand," Vizzini writes. "Thats why I trademarked and word marked the name. At that time, there was only one other site around dedicated to gay gamers. I have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars on Gaymer.org. I have done so gladly as it's brought happiness to many people."Vizzini isn't pursuing next year's GaymerCon gathering since his trademark applies only to online communities. The /r/gaymers community and other sites, such as GayGamer.net, are discussing the issue and the larger implications of trademarks and online forums. We raised the question of popular phrases being "owned" when Vizzini first announced the trademark, and it's no less relevant now.As of today, Gaymer.org itself is "suspended," though whether this is due to an unintentional DDOS attack or reasons unrelated to the Reddit attention is unclear.
EA and GLAAD to host a panel against homophobia in online games
Tomorrow marks an interesting event in Redwood City, CA as Electronic Arts teams up with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD) to host a panel regarding homophobia in online games.The panel will be featuring some major industry players, including GayGamer founder Flynn DeMarco (AKA Fruit Brute), senior director of communications and industry affairs for the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Dan Hewitt, senior producer Caryl Shaw from Maxis Studio, Linden Lab's vice president of customer relations Cyn Skyberg, and Xbox Live's program manager Stephen Toulouse (Gamertag: Stepto.)Stephen Toulouse's presence at the panel is especially interesting, as Microsoft has come under fire for some rather inflammatory anti-gay policies.The panel will be moderated by GLAAD's Justin Cole, their director of digital and online media. The panel will take place tomorrow, July 18th, from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific time.
Current takes on homophobia in gaming
From Current TV, we're happy to bring you that rarest of delights: Reporting on gaming from a non-gaming outlet that's reasoned, competent and (wonder of wonders) well-researched. The story of GayGamer is told by those who breathe life into the site, showing not only why they're an important part of gaming culture, but what drove them to stick together in the first place. You can find it right after the jump.The only downside is that the section on homophobia makes the community look so bad; but honestly, it's only bashing those of us that deserve it. ... You know what? We're kicking homophobes out of "us." We're officially making them "them." Sorry guys. Leave your fake guitars with Shelia on the way out.
GayGamer's E3 scrapbook series
The boys over at GayGamer.net put together a video scrapbook of serious questions they asked members of the gaming press during E3. The series features folks from several of your favorite gaming blogs, sites and magazines. There's no embed code and we referenced a couple of these during the week, but here they all are in one neat, perfectly trimmed, little package with a link to each episode: Part 1: Who won the E3 press conference war? Part 2: What character or franchise do you hope you never have to see again? Part 3: E3, GDC or Pax? Part 4: Would you rather sleep with Marcus Fenix or have your Gamerscore reset to zero? Part 5: Best game of the show? Part 6: Worst game of the show? Part 7: What is your E3 pet peeve? Part 8: Do you manscape? GG tells us they'll be doing another video scrapbook at PAX in a couple weeks and asking the same type of hard-hitting introspective questions of random attendees. We definitely had fun with this and hope to see them do it again.
April Fools' Alert #15: A potpourri of nonsense
As we bid adieu to this All Fools' Day, it's time to take a broom to the leftover balderdash and sweep it out of the house so we can start fresh and clean tomorrow. Straightgamer.net -- OH NO! The boys over at GayGamer.net went to "therapy" and are now devout heterosexuals. Now all they can talk about is boobs, beer and babes. That's so not fierce! Lego Halo -- 1Up reposted EGM's April issue gag for the internets. Wii Want More -- A Wii downloadable content service?! ROFLCOPTERBBQ Brain Age Mobile for iPhone -- The Wiicast does a very subtle trick that any other day of the year might be believable. Reggie talks Earthbound -- Starmen.net spliced together some clips and gets Monsieur Fils-Aime talking frankly about Nintendo's thoughts on Earthbound in America. N64 games ported to DS -- Vooks.net got the scoop on some N64 titles being "retooled & refreshed" for the handheld. Final Fantasy XIII demo and Final Fantasy VII remake -- PSXExtreme didn't even try to be witty, they just went for some painful lies.
GayGamer.net offline following hate attack
After a series of hate speech incidents and forum postings to GayGamer.net, the site was taken offline by a set of denial of service attacks. Flynn DeMarco, the site's owner, said things started going wrong toward the end of last week until the site's host, GoDaddy.com, finally took the site offline until the attacks could be stopped. They are currently attempting to get back online and hope to be finished by Monday.A couple minutes in an Xbox Live Halo multiplayer session should give anyone an idea of why safe havens like GayGamer.net exist (along with Gaymer.org and Gamers.Experimentations.org), but for someone to go out of their way to attack the site is extreme. In the year since its existence, the news site and forum has given voice to issues that were previously rarely discussed. We share in Kotaku's sentiment, where DeMarco is weekend editor, that "it's sad to see that even in the virtual worlds of gaming and game coverage people decide that the only way they can express themselves is by attacking others." GayGamer has sought to bring demographic inclusion into the industry and we hope to hear their voice back in the cacophony of these internets soon.GayGamer.net's statement can be found after the break.Update: The site is back online.
Gaymer.org looks to trademark 'Gaymer'
Can a man own the term "gaymer"? Chris Vizzini, owner of community site Gaymer.org, is looking to find out as he's applied to trademark the term. Now, before we lose people in a hail of righteous fury and legalese, it should be noted that Vizzini is only looking to trademark the word from online groups trying to use the term in another context. It's also worth noting that the controversial term "gaymer" had been used to describe the gay gaming community before Gaymer.org showed up on the scene. Also, as can be clearly seen in the photo, Gaymers original cider has been enjoyed since 1770 by the island of Britain.There is currently some heated debate about the issue on the Gaymer.org forums and the other large gay gamer community site Gamers.Experimentations.org. Although many don't identify with the term "gaymer," it's still interesting that the term has gotten to the point of needing trademark protection.GayGamer.net's site owner, who goes by the handle Fruit Brute, says, "I know there are many people that frequent our site who are members of both Gaymer.org and GamersExperimentations and I am all for that. I wish there was someway we could combine them all together in one big, happy, rainbow filled, pink glitter sprinkled family, but situations like this really seem to cause people to draw their lines in the sand."To bring the issue into wider focus, what if someone tried to trademark terms like noob, pwn and other commonly used words part of gamer speak? Should one man control a word's destiny online when it's tied to a group in our gamer community?
Gay gamer survey results with large hetero inclusion
var digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/Gay_gamer_survey_results_with_large_hetero_inclusion'; In the summer of 2006, after receiving academic approval from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jason Rockwood opened up the "Gaymer Survey" to the public. Rockwood expected 600 participants -- if he was lucky -- for the first-of-its-kind approved study exploring the social and behavioral demographic of gay video game players and the role of sexual orientation on gaming habits. The survey was discussed in some regional lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) publications and filtered out to the gaming press. The survey, with over 10,000 respondents, became a sexually inclusive survey of gamers -- gay, straight and bi.The study originally broke new ground for not only being the first study exploring LGBT gamers, but it was the first academic study of any gamer group. There is currently no academic studies of female gamers or gamers of color. In a 2006 interview, Rockwood said, "The main purpose of the survey was to be a census. Before we can ask more intelligent questions we need to know who we are dealing with. First, we need to prove that homosexual gamers even exist. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but that's where you have to start on something like this. This survey is an attempt to quantify the existence of an invisible minority."Continue after the break for some highlights from the survey
