When Xantia stepped up at BlizzCon to address World of Warcraft‘s character design and ask that women in the game not all look as if they had stepped out in just their underwear, it wasn’t the flippant dismissal of her question by the designers that bothered her. No, it was the sound of a large portion of the male audience booing her just for asking. A new interview with Xantia by Kotaku asks her about what she thinks about the question and the incident in retrospect, and it was that audience reaction that stuck with her more.
Honestly, the sound of being booed by that many guys, in some ways that bothered me more than getting dismissed. You had that initial cheer from the women in the crowd and then just a wave of boos.
Of course, Xantia has a bit more to say about the state of sexism in the game industry and notes that she did actually apply for a job in Blizzard back in 2012. While she wasn’t hired, she now feels that that was a stroke of good fortune. She also has some words on other topics, including Greg Street’s largely rambling apology for how he handled her question during the panel itself:
I guess Greg Street now knows who I am now. Cool. OK. And also that wasn’t really an apology, but sure you do you. Whatever gets you to sleep at night. I was joking with a friend when I saw it, when I saw everything he was writing about that, just, you know, “Oh, I couldn’t see her react, I couldn’t see her face,” and how he’s disappointed in all of these things. Yeah, but your ears were working just fine. Did you not hear hundreds of people booing me? What would it have taken to say, “Hey, guys, come on, that’s not cool?” Whenever you start explaining yourself to that degree, it stops being an apology.
