But after marketing agency FCB Chicago launched 'Bully Hunters' last week with a splashy livestream, the campaign was mocked by gamers, criticized by harassment experts and disowned by the companies it had enlisted as supporters. Within days, the agency shut it down.What went wrong?According to the agency, the demise of Bully Hunters was a case of good-intentioned naivete colliding with the idiosyncratic, often-aggressive world of online gaming. Others, though, say it was the result of cynical opportunism that exacerbated the problem the marketers were trying to solve.Fighting harassment 'is a real, honest-to-God issue which unfortunately now has been tainted by this insincere, totally superficial effort,' said Rebecca Rothschild, a Chicago gamer and writer who has endured online bullying.

Apr 17, 2020  The more you react to a bully's taunts, the more likely he or she is to persist. Horses can be bullies, too. When they are, it's usually because their behavior has been enabled and reinforced by humans. And, as it turns out, what dials a human bully up to maximum strength is essentially the same as what encourages a four-legged bully. 'Bullying within online gaming environments is a real issue,' he said. 'We are standing for acceptance and tolerance within our games.

'It bothered me on a lot of levels.' Liz Taylor, chief creative officer of FCB Chicago, said Bully Hunters was a pro bono project for the agency, akin to campaigns it has done on handgun violence, colon cancer and Chicago's bid for the second Amazon headquarters.Researchers have established that in-game harassment is a pervasive problem, and Taylor said she has personal experience with it: Her teenage daughter endured online harassment so upsetting that she no longer enjoys gaming.' There were a lot of people in the agency who had a passion around trying to make the gaming environment a safer, more inclusive place for everyone,' she said.But one thing they didn't have was experience. Keisha Howard, founder of a female-centric consultancy and event organizer called Sugar Gamers, said that was evident when she talked with FCB Chicago about the concept.She said she was bothered by the idea that girls and women need saviors to protect them from gaming bullies. She also was concerned about the title FCB Chicago focused on—Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or CS:GO, a popular first-person shooter game that is notoriously complex.' They went for the biggest bear and didn't do their research on the game,' Howard said.

'It was easily torn apart by hard-core gamers who absolutely understand that title.' FCB said the campaign wasn't a marketing opportunity for brands, but several companies and organizations still lent their support, including SteelSeries, a Chicago-based maker of gaming accessories, and the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women.On April 12, the agency launched Bully Hunters with a livestream from Chicago's Ignite Gaming Lounge. It began with a montage of vicious insults recorded during games, followed by a woman's voice intoning over a countdown: 'This ends in three, two.' The set featured 'casual gamers' playing CS:GO on computers, while across the room, the 'Bully Hunters' waited to enter the fray. An online tool was supposed to summon them into the game, where they would track down and eliminate bullies, leaving a calling card in the chat: 'Harassment is not a game.'

The livestream included two purported episodes of harassment: In each, a voice that sounded like it belonged to the same man made vulgar, sexist and threatening remarks to female players, only to be dispatched by a Bully Hunter.The action seemed artificial to veteran CS:GO players, who accurately called it out as fake. One of the livestream's hosts, Nati Casanova, a popular gamer who goes by the handle ZombiUnicorn, later said she flubbed a scripted line meant to emphasize that the encounters were staged.' We would 100 percent agree that that key message didn't come across,' Taylor said.

'Our intent was never to mislead anyone. It was to point out this is what could happen in the real world.' But the damage was done. Online sleuths, looking up gamer profiles, revealed that a victim and a Bully Hunter appeared to be the same person. Others picked apart the statistics on harassment presented during the livestream.PewDiePie, a YouTuber who is the biggest celebrity in gaming, was particularly unsparing.

In a video viewed more than 3.5 million times, he blasted the organizers and the participating companies, saying they were exploiting a serious problem to sell gear.' You did more harm than good here, clearly,' he said. 'This is so idiotic that no one is going to take harassment seriously.

That's how stupid it is. So don't pretend that you took a step forward; this is taking a step back.' The companies quickly put up statements distancing themselves from Bully Hunters. SteelSeries said its only role was to donate equipment and 'support the call for positive change' and that it hadn't been involved in executing the campaign.The only group that stood by the effort was Chicago NOW.

Paloma Delgadillo, the chapter's president, said she wasn't surprised by the blowback but rejected the idea that it harmed the anti-harassment movement.' As an activist, you never have perfect tools in your toolbox,' she said. 'I'm of the opinion that if there's a problem, we always need to be looking for a solution.

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If it doesn't work, it's OK. Hopefully this brings attention to it.' Jesse Fox, an Ohio State University professor who has studied sexist behavior in video games, said Bully Hunters relied on a faulty premise—that harassers can be brought to heel through chastening defeat.'

We know from aggression studies in video games that when they get more frustrated they get angrier, and they're more likely to ,' she said. 'When someone comes in and wipes the floor with you, you're not going to be amenable to hearing the message.' She said more productive approaches would involve developing online tools to ban the most toxic offenders, and encouraging players to tamp down harassment the moment it takes place, thus denying trolls the validation they crave.After the barrage of criticism, FCB Chicago took down Bully Hunters' website and social media accounts. All that remains are YouTube copies of the livestream and hundreds of blistering critiques.Taylor said while the agency is still processing the hard lessons of the campaign, it is still committed to promoting an anti- movement among gamers.' I hope people understand we did this to try to make the world a better and more inclusive place,' she said. 'That is what is so gut-wrenching and heartbreaking about where it is right now.'

As just one example: A from Ohio University found that when a female player in Halo 3 greeted other players with an innocuous phrase like “hi everyone”—with no other information—she faced replies like “shut up you whore.” A rallying cry of “alright team let’s do this” earned the response, “slut.”The problem has become so dire it has prompted corporate response. Microsoft even created a new type of system for reporting player harassment and behavior for the Xbox One console, released late last year. At a talk at the annual Game Developer’s Conference in March, Wiseman and Burch showed the results of some research they conducted, asking 200 school-aged boys about what they believe to be the most desirable traits for a man.It’s typical stuff—boys want to be seen as strong, with good verbal skills. Smart but not too smart, athletic at the right sports, able to spend some money.

They don’t get emotional, they’re not nerdy, and they’re certainly not sappy.In a separate survey of more than 1,000 boys, Wiseman and Burch asked about video-game habits. Overwhelmingly, the boys chose Master Chief, the hero of Microsoft’s blockbuster Halo series, as their favorite character.Why? He’s a “badass,' according to the kids, “an amalgamation of all the things boys want to be,” Burch says. “They want to be cool and save the day.”The problem with that, Burch says, is that Master Chief is emotionless, a point she emphasized at GDC by showing footage of a climactic scene in which Master Chief sounded like a robot. The highest-grossing games feature similarly unfeeling men at their center: BioShock Infinite, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto V.

Hints of vulnerability are few and far between. (Tellingly, the one game in which the protagonist regularly revealed their pain and fear of failure had a woman in the spotlight: Tomb Raider.)These heroes' coldness isn't necessarily the source of any bad behavior, but Wiseman argues when boys lack other solid role models, game characters’ emotional distance can serve as an example to follow. That in turn allows boys to default to hurtful expression online: racism, homophobia and misogyny. If feelings aren’t cool, you’re not worried about hurting them, right?Although Wiseman admits there isn't yet research that shows empathy in media characters can influence behavior, one 2007 study published in the journal Developmental Psychology showed promise.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and VU University Amsterdam found boys who identified with violent characters were more likely to be violent in real life. They also pinpointed the possibility of the reverse being true: 'Future research should also investigate the role of empathy in violent video game effects.' It’s tempting to ignore boys' online behavior as inconsequential, but Wiseman points out that today’s abusive teenagers turn into tomorrow’s men. And those men are just as bad. After all, with the average age of male gamers over 30, many abusive players are likely to be adults.That’s why Wiseman and Burch say game makers should feel obligated, as creators of the most popular entertainment medium for boys, to inject some emotional nuance into their work.Making cooperation a part of gameplay is an easy way to do that. Many games already require players to use teamwork to win, but Burch and Wiseman say more can be done. Football matches require players to shake hand after every match—what if there was a digital equivalent?More studios, aware of the impact abusive players can have on their reputation, are attempting to curb this type of behavior.

Riot Games, maker of the multiplayer strategy game League of Legends, which has more than 55 million users, has poured huge amounts of money into finding solutions to encourage sportsmanship. Jeffrey Lin, head of social systems at Riot Games, suggests early efforts have worked. Taking away chat functionality from players who receive multiple negative reports can reverse bad behavior, for example.Cooperation and politeness are the norm in many e-sports already.

Starting a game of the real-time strategy title StarCraft begins more often than not with a customary message of “GLHF”: Good luck, have fun.Creating heroes who actually display emotion, fear, and even moments in which they have no idea what the hell they’re doing can be a relief for young men, Wiseman says. A key idea of her most recent book is that boys have rich emotional lives, and don’t really want to be constrained by the old, repressive stereotypes of masculinity.“The boys I know don’t want stoic dads,” she says. “They want courageous, strong dads, but they want them to admit moments of weakness and fear.”Pop culture has already started reflecting that idea on TV and in film, where strong-silent types have given way to more fully human leading males. Think of Daniel Craig’s wounded take on James Bond, or Robert Downey Jr.’s PTSD-affected Iron Man, both of whom have real, warm relationships with others. Gaming hasn’t caught up, but there are signs it could. Telltale's The Walking Dead, one of the most critically acclaimed game series of 2013, featured a black man as the protagonist—a rarity in games—who regularly was forced to make harrowing decisions and confront his own shortcomings.

Does he reveal the truth about his past as a convicted murderer to his new companions—or risk them finding out on their own with dire consequences?It's the player's choice, but for the most part, Lee is a benevolent character, taking an orphaned girl under his stewardship and often putting himself in danger to protect her. Of course, this characterization isn't available in multiplayer environments, which is where most abuse takes place. Burch says this is why it's so important to reinforce cooperation between players: Why couldn't we show an animation of players in a first-person shooter patting each other on the back after a game, she asks?Some in the games industry aren’t convinced. In March, an audience member at Wiseman and Burch’s developers talk posed a question that exemplified the very problem they’re trying to fix: Wouldn’t their suggestions essentially make Master Chief “into a girl”?Wiseman responded calmly to the sexist assumptions embedded in the question: “What Ashly and I are asking you to do is create heroes that allow children to look at themselves and say, ‘I can be Master Chief—male or female—but I can also ask for help, and admit how important the relationships are in my life.’”We want to hear what you think about this article. To the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.