259: Vaginophobia
- Thread starter Michael Thomsen
- Start date
I dunno girls are not so....er...... dandified these days I do not think you have to go out of your way to make something more suitable for them. Then again look at manga/anime it is mainstream to all demogrphics while gaming can't really get out of the comic male teen phase.
Then again with DLC, wiiware/VC you can hit most demographics so I dunno..... maybe it all boils down to less unrealistic gritty realism and better writing/story telling with more feeling and emotion put into it other than generic and bland action scripts.
Then again with DLC, wiiware/VC you can hit most demographics so I dunno..... maybe it all boils down to less unrealistic gritty realism and better writing/story telling with more feeling and emotion put into it other than generic and bland action scripts.
Lack of data does not evidence make.
Seriously. I applaud your determination to explore this subject. But I could just as easily postulate that games these days really pander to very female fears, by pointing to the success farmville and other "tending" games. You know, even Starcraft could be evidence for a particularly female-infused movement in games: bugs are known to scare the weaker sex, after all. And it's all about nurturing your troops anyway.
Don't pick *some* games, analyze them all from a given period. Include the Wii as a platform, but don't limit yourself to it. List exactly the criteria which you think are specifically about male insecurities, and the criteria which you think are specifically about female insecurities. Point to studies that prove, as much as possible, that these insecurities are common enough to matter. Then gather data according to these criteria, and present the results. Be sure to question gamers, non-gamers, people who consider themselves secure in their sexuality, and people who don't. Include a control group, and feed them things that aren't considered games (e.g. pointless clickery) but show the same things, and record their reactions. And so on.
Until and unless someone does something like the above, I'll dismiss any arguments about gender issues in games.
It's not that I don't think they exist - I'm sure they do, and my impression is that they're frustratingly common and particularly blatant. But opinion pieces about them don't help, and just serve to perpetuate stereotypes, not to further our understanding of games.
Seriously. I applaud your determination to explore this subject. But I could just as easily postulate that games these days really pander to very female fears, by pointing to the success farmville and other "tending" games. You know, even Starcraft could be evidence for a particularly female-infused movement in games: bugs are known to scare the weaker sex, after all. And it's all about nurturing your troops anyway.
Don't pick *some* games, analyze them all from a given period. Include the Wii as a platform, but don't limit yourself to it. List exactly the criteria which you think are specifically about male insecurities, and the criteria which you think are specifically about female insecurities. Point to studies that prove, as much as possible, that these insecurities are common enough to matter. Then gather data according to these criteria, and present the results. Be sure to question gamers, non-gamers, people who consider themselves secure in their sexuality, and people who don't. Include a control group, and feed them things that aren't considered games (e.g. pointless clickery) but show the same things, and record their reactions. And so on.
Until and unless someone does something like the above, I'll dismiss any arguments about gender issues in games.
It's not that I don't think they exist - I'm sure they do, and my impression is that they're frustratingly common and particularly blatant. But opinion pieces about them don't help, and just serve to perpetuate stereotypes, not to further our understanding of games.
I don't anticipate a massive overhaul of the way women are portrayed (or not portrayed) in games anytime soon. However, all I can say is: when I unlocked Chris' 'Warrior' outfit in RE5 I heaved a sigh of relief, in that it was at least fair, not progressive by any means, but fair. I played through it again out of spite, just to see his huge nipples basking in the zombie infested fields.
Still an excellent article. The ongoing, adolescent machoism in videogames is one of the major obstacles to overcome in the struggle to make games become art.
For the GOW2 thing, this is an excellent example of how the developer believes us all to be immature adolescents with machoistic fantasies, and them being completely correct about it.
Dom's wife's death is the sacrifice of story for satisfying the whims of impatient gamers. With proper storywork, an escort mission would have been the correct, justified, heroic and manly thing to have. Instead, they take the fast and macho way out, killing her as an escort mission would have been a burden to us.
A crime against the hope that games, someday, will become proper art, instead of just a craft.
For the difference between manly and macho see Yatzee's definition: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...tion/7597-Extra-Punctuation-Male-Protagonists
We are many who would like to know why you are sick of this argument. To condemn the discussion or the opponent's views without any points or facts are simply an attempt to make the opponent seem stupid, a desperate measure to be used when one has no real chance to win the debate.Bealzibob said:
For the GOW2 thing, this is an excellent example of how the developer believes us all to be immature adolescents with machoistic fantasies, and them being completely correct about it.
Dom's wife's death is the sacrifice of story for satisfying the whims of impatient gamers. With proper storywork, an escort mission would have been the correct, justified, heroic and manly thing to have. Instead, they take the fast and macho way out, killing her as an escort mission would have been a burden to us.
A crime against the hope that games, someday, will become proper art, instead of just a craft.
For the difference between manly and macho see Yatzee's definition: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...tion/7597-Extra-Punctuation-Male-Protagonists
I personally know several of these; males that seem to have a strong fear of their manhood falling off if they identify with anything even remotely feminine.Article said:
Maybe I'm strange but I've never killed a prostitute in any GTA game or felt the urge to. I instinctively avoid killing women as much as possible in games. So I find it odd that killing prostitutes in GTA is brought up so often. I much prefer protect the "princess and hold her hand" gimmick of Ico. I must be some kind of women liking deviant, lol.
"In Gears of War 2, Dom kills his wife in an alien prison because she would be a burden"
That wasn't why he did that. It was because she was too far gone to save, and all he could do was end her suffering. If you really thought he did it becuse she'd be a "burden" then that just shows your own misogony and idiocy.
As others have pointed out this is a very poor article.
That wasn't why he did that. It was because she was too far gone to save, and all he could do was end her suffering. If you really thought he did it becuse she'd be a "burden" then that just shows your own misogony and idiocy.
As others have pointed out this is a very poor article.
*jumps on the terrible article bandwagon*
I read a scientific article on the way men and women's sex appeal works. Obviously it was generalizing, but the reason guys don't randomly strip unlike women characters is because visual stuff doesn't appeal as much to heterosexual women as it does to hetero men. I can't remember the article.
Yeah... Well... SO IS A WOMAN'S FINGER!RobCoxxy said:"OH BUT THE BIG GUN IS A PHALLIC SYMBOL"Spinozaad said:
And... eh... MY PENIS. Oh, wait. Yeah...
Anyway. I feel that most games featuring macho gorilla monkey men wearing space armour protagonists who grunt and growl at women while fingering their triggers are aimed at teenagers/young-adults.
They like that. Just as much as they like boobies. There is no Freudian attitude. Some times people are, in my honest opinion, trying too hard to find psychological depth in every thing. Some times a turd is, indeed, just a pile of shit and not a statement.
True, true, but after Studying Psychology for a few years, I've seen it fit to throw Freudian analysis into anything. ANYTHING.Spinozaad said:Yeah... Well... SO IS A WOMAN'S FINGER!RobCoxxy said:"OH BUT THE BIG GUN IS A PHALLIC SYMBOL"Spinozaad said:
And... eh... MY PENIS. Oh, wait. Yeah...
Anyway. I feel that most games featuring macho gorilla monkey men wearing space armour protagonists who grunt and growl at women while fingering their triggers are aimed at teenagers/young-adults.
They like that. Just as much as they like boobies. There is no Freudian attitude. Some times people are, in my honest opinion, trying too hard to find psychological depth in every thing. Some times a turd is, indeed, just a pile of shit and not a statement.
Good fun, but the only reason. I mean yes, there's something phallic about gigantic weapons, but I think it's hilarious.
I missed the meeting we had when it was decided that video games are some sort of social view into the lives of "adolescent-men". When I play a game its usually to unwind from a stressful day at work or on my day off when I don't have anything better to do. I don't have any secret wants to beat people to death with a golf club or trade bottle caps to a doctor and then shoot him to death and steal them back, it's mostly about just having fun and taking a load off. I think a lot of these games make easy targets for feminists, but who gives a shit about their tired propaganda anyway. Personally, I don't like to play as a female protagonist in games but there have been some that I've enjoyed. I always enjoy popping some other player across the ocean in the head with a SIG 550 in R6:Vegas, chainsawing some evil locust bastard in half with a lancer, or trying to punching the reporter on the Citadel as Shepard in Mass Effect 2. These things are fun, not some secret hidden fear of not being able to prove my masculinity. If there's some sort of problem that society has with that, so what? It wasn't until the industry was pulling in billions of dollars that anyone other than those who participated in the gaming community gave a shit.
This was an interesting article I missed the first time around, so I'm actually glad it was posted again for me to see.
However, while I feel it was interesting, I don't actually feel it was completely accurate. Or, rather, it sort of feels like the author was digging a bit too hard to find meaning in the scenes he used as examples. You can take ANY scene from ANY game and sit down and pick at it and probably find something that you could apply some sort of psychological subtext to. As far as Grand Theft Auto goes, I am a lady, and I have never been offended by any of the content in it; GTA 4 is still one of my favourite games. Anyway, isn't the whole point of that series that it's cartoonishly overblown in EVERY aspect? So much of it is done DELIBERATELY to offend/excite interest that I can't see getting worked up about it or taking any hidden meaning from it.
Also, as far as gaming journalism goes, well, I guess it depends on what part of gaming culture you look at. It seems like the indie scene has a lot more females active in the media aspect than the "professional" scene. IE, I (a lady!) write for an online indie gaming review source, and we have several other women on staff currently, and have had others come and go. Don't see many female names cropping up over at IGN or in the credits in most gaming magazines, but I don't think there's a hidden agenda to it. We're out there. Just apparently not where you're looking.
Actually, the most personally offensive game I've come across is actually the indie title The Path by Tale of Tales. The whole point of that game is to wander around the woods as young women of varying ages until something terrible happens to them (usually implied rape/death) and then to watch them stagger slowly and brokenly along the walkway to Grandma's House, whereupon you get treated to an artsy sequence of random imagery before you do it all over again with another little girl. For me that's a hundred times worse than Nico Bellic being bored by the vapid female characters in GTA just so he can get them into bed. I can usually look at anything and say, "Well, I don't get it, but someone must like it," but I literally do not see how anyone can play that game and see it for anything but the most pointless sort of torture porn pretending to be an art game.
On the subject of GTA, though, I was thinking recently that I would like to see a female protagonist in one of the games. Not for gender balance issues, but because it would probably silence a lot of the "ROCKSTAR HATES WOMEN" clamour if the next game featured a female playable character as over-the-top violent as Tommy Vercetti, or battered psychologically as Nico Bellic. I'd like to see what sort of female lead they'd give us, and I'd hope they wouldn't tone the world down for her. Of course, if it never happens, meh.
However, while I feel it was interesting, I don't actually feel it was completely accurate. Or, rather, it sort of feels like the author was digging a bit too hard to find meaning in the scenes he used as examples. You can take ANY scene from ANY game and sit down and pick at it and probably find something that you could apply some sort of psychological subtext to. As far as Grand Theft Auto goes, I am a lady, and I have never been offended by any of the content in it; GTA 4 is still one of my favourite games. Anyway, isn't the whole point of that series that it's cartoonishly overblown in EVERY aspect? So much of it is done DELIBERATELY to offend/excite interest that I can't see getting worked up about it or taking any hidden meaning from it.
Also, as far as gaming journalism goes, well, I guess it depends on what part of gaming culture you look at. It seems like the indie scene has a lot more females active in the media aspect than the "professional" scene. IE, I (a lady!) write for an online indie gaming review source, and we have several other women on staff currently, and have had others come and go. Don't see many female names cropping up over at IGN or in the credits in most gaming magazines, but I don't think there's a hidden agenda to it. We're out there. Just apparently not where you're looking.
Actually, the most personally offensive game I've come across is actually the indie title The Path by Tale of Tales. The whole point of that game is to wander around the woods as young women of varying ages until something terrible happens to them (usually implied rape/death) and then to watch them stagger slowly and brokenly along the walkway to Grandma's House, whereupon you get treated to an artsy sequence of random imagery before you do it all over again with another little girl. For me that's a hundred times worse than Nico Bellic being bored by the vapid female characters in GTA just so he can get them into bed. I can usually look at anything and say, "Well, I don't get it, but someone must like it," but I literally do not see how anyone can play that game and see it for anything but the most pointless sort of torture porn pretending to be an art game.
On the subject of GTA, though, I was thinking recently that I would like to see a female protagonist in one of the games. Not for gender balance issues, but because it would probably silence a lot of the "ROCKSTAR HATES WOMEN" clamour if the next game featured a female playable character as over-the-top violent as Tommy Vercetti, or battered psychologically as Nico Bellic. I'd like to see what sort of female lead they'd give us, and I'd hope they wouldn't tone the world down for her. Of course, if it never happens, meh.
I literally lol'd at this and had to stop reading for a minute to regain my composure. Our secular culture does not, in any way, shape, or form, "fear" female anatomy. Quite the opposite, actually, to the point that it's hard to get away from it.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/5/7/
