259: Vaginophobia

[Nickisimo]

I don't really care if my in-game character is a man, woman, sentient being, dog, whatever. I don't need to beat women to death in games or take out any anti-feminine aggression via gaming.

Still, I do find the characterization of both sexes in video games to be flat-out ridiculous. I'm not saying I want my character to be an ugly fatass with no reasonable appeal, but you're usually stuck between "Joe Bodybuilder" and "Sassy Boobage".

I applaud games that portray people as the flawed creatures that they are and allow me to play as an average human. I mean, there are times where I'm ashamed to play games in front of my girlfriend or friends just because I know that they're gonna see the character and be like, "Nick, seriously? That girl's boobs are ridiculous. And you enjoy this? What a pig. What a sick pig."

Take Dragon Quest 8 for instance. My Dad and I used to play the Dragon Warrior games for the NES together when I was a kid, so I showed him the PS2 game years ago to show him how the combat was still largely the same, the music resembled the old and the difficulty was up to par. What did he notice? The female character's boobies jiggling all over the screen. Great.

 

[Furrama]

What they fear is kind of more dangerous than what you fear, and this can tend to make them quite angry when the fears are compared.

This.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/2140,news-comment,news-politics,rapex-the-internal-anti-rape-device -this came into big discussion recently because of the World Cup. It's sad it has been driven to this. (I only bring it up because this made me think a bit about the whole 'weakness' situation and basically *blaaaaaaaaaaah* all over here.)

 

[Burningsok]

Holy shit this article is still being commented on.

 

[Drakmeire]

this kinda makes sense seeing how games sometimes give people a chance to act out on many things that would get them arrested in then real world, I play fallout as I would act in that situation, which means I tend to avoid conflict (except when I decide to act snarky) but I know many people who would go on an all-out rampage in the game for no real reason and you can often see any prejudices they may have during these rampages, depending on which characters they enjoy killing.

 

[Grand_Marquis]

Holy shit this article is still being commented on.

You're surprised? Nothing makes gamers more insecure than a serious discussion about women.

 

[nipsen]

I would have mentioned more about MGS4, like maybe how all the bosses are women?

..or how they hug you to death, how Hal warns you about them grabbing you, or them all being archetypes of psychotic girlfriends.

Or how Hal can't bring himself to drop his act in front of Naomi, but scores anyway

Imo, the core of the article is very true. There are a lot of adolescent children running the industry. To the point where they are catered for in Uncharted 2 even when Amy Hennig writes the script. In the sense that it's never possible to really treat the "mainstream gamer" as someone who likes to be treated as if they were slightly more mature.

The games that did that, and didn't simply cater shamelessly to that emotionally stunted male child, they aren't made any longer, simple as that. Example: Obsidian's Kotor2, Troika's Bloodlines, Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight, Adventure games of various kinds, Tim Schafer's games like Grim Fandango or Psychonauts. These games are excellent games, but the industry doesn't want games like that to be made in favour of adolescent fantasies.

..the article just uses made up facts to make the idea seem more likely. Not really a good idea.

But I mean, take a look at Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. If you take the plot and story step by step, you see a tendency that pervades other games like it as well.. which is an enumerated list of things that are too violent to be aimed at children, but still too childish to be taken as seriously as it takes itself. I called it something like "apparently made for adolescents over eighteen" in my review, because that's what it is. R-rated children's games. Bayonetta is exactly the same - it's Sonic, just exclusively for adults.

And it's just too true that a lot of gamers - specially the ones bravely championing their right to bash hookers in with a dildo on the internet, without this actually saying anything at all about their personality - are exactly like that. They obsessively purchase games, and want to think that no one else are different from that.

Just like it's the case that if the games-industry is to ever expand to more than fps-games, etc., then it needs to grow up, and give other types of games real coverage and focus. I mean, seriously, you see attempts to make man-child fantasies more deep games. And they're hailed as grand story-telling genius. IGN and Gamespot all have at some point or another hailed Bungie and IW for their "story-telling genius", for example.

Or what do we get with reviews, also on this site? Gears 3 is treated with revered respect for fantastic story-telling achievement brilliance - and Alpha Protocol reluctantly gets some sort of unspecific plus in the margins for being "quite good, actually". But no one ever really manage to explain why.

 

[Snownine]

The reason why the vagina spike was more taboo than the neck tentacle has nothing to do with it's association with female genitalia but with genitalia period! You would be just as unlikely to come across an enemy that beats you to death with a massive spiked penis.

 

[Eggsnham]

I vaguely remember reading this a while ago. I refuse to read it again.

Anyways, I am not afraid of gaming culture attaining a bisexual status. Gaming has been homo for way too long.

 

[nipsen]

Now stop trying to impute nasty motives to me and speak to the topic like a real man.

:/ any time you're ready..

 

[II2]

Example: Obsidian's Kotor2, Troika's Bloodlines, Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight, Adventure games of various kinds, Tim Schafer's games like Grim Fandango or Psychonauts. These games are excellent games, but the industry doesn't want games like that to be made in favour of adolescent fantasies.

I think it's more the "industry" (publishers and producers) don't think they can SELL as many of those kinds of titles vs Gears of War(etc).

WANT is the territory of dreamers, developers, consumers and fans. Most of the big decisions on what creative license gets issued is, ultimately, in the hands of the publishing companies and money men.

 

[nipsen]

I think it's more the "industry" (publishers and producers) don't think they can SELL as many of those kinds of titles vs Gears of War(etc).

Or that they can't fit the titles into their existing advertisement schemes. Just like console mags can't write about anything else.

There was this curious string of articles about how difficult it was to label certain kinds of titles a while back. The premise was that "fps" and "shooter" was an eminently easy sell. But "puzzle" and "role-playing" was, oh, gruesomely difficult.

And that's the problem. "These titles" can't be sold in the same way as shooters. Or as adolescent male fantasies. They've even tried - Psychonauts was marketed as an arcade psycho power shooter, for example.

But why is advertisement tailored to that narrow audience so specifically? I mean, it's not just Microsoft that does this - where they are deliberately capitalizing on their fanatic fanbase. It's companies that actually have made a completely different product: they still sell these games as if they were adolescent fantasies.

It's a strange question, right? Makes no sense to market something on what it's not - until you read a console magazine, or hear anyone covering E3, who are arguing deliberately like this: "if most people like it, then I like it too". Where "most people" are the other bloggers and console fans who think exactly in the same way, and who are fans of the exact same type of game as them.

Because the truth is that it's never actually been tried to actually sell games differently. If you look at Heavy Rain, for example, I think anyone who actually followed what Sony did here will agree that it sold as well as it did - because it wasn't advertised for at all. I mean, I chatted with the producer about it - they had serious and dominating doubts about even trying to sell it as film-narrative and film-art translated to games. And.. of course they're right - because if you look at the console-magazines, they are uniformly trashing the game for not being anything special, and compare it to Mass Effect. That happened on the escapist as well.

So they were very skeptical when a lot of different people actually were really interested in that type of story-telling in games. Had the same skeptical attitude when Uncharted 2 came out, and it was even worse with Killzone 2.. So U2 was marketed as a popcorn movie - and that was the excuse that allowed anyone to market it as something that contained film-direction of any kind, as opposed to shooting and arcade murdering fun.

..but if you judged it all by the reaction in the console mags alone - then you really would see even that as a complete failure. Not because the game didn't actually have good direction, but because the ones who cover it - loudly and prominently, while dictating their own loud fans - just don't have any idea what to actually look for.

They're the kind of people who would review a movie like this: "great movie, liked it a lot, characters are dumb at times. 7/10".

 

[Snownine]

The reason why the vagina spike was more taboo than the neck tentacle has nothing to do with it's association with female genitalia but with genitalia period! You would be just as unlikely to come across an enemy that beats you to death with a massive spiked penis.

Does an enemy that IS a giant, tentacled, spiked penis count? [http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Stroper_%28Final_Fantasy_IX%29]

Holy Freudian nightmares Batman! I totally forgot about those things, and they are from one of my favorite games too!

 

[wikicated]

is that nightmares wife in the background ?

that was an interesting read though.

 

[Bullfrog1983]

"Why should a tentacle popping out of a woman's crotch be less acceptable than a tentacle popping out of a man's neck in Resident Evil 5?"

Because a person's head isn't a sex organ? I find one popping out of a woman's crotch more horrifying simply because seeing one pop out of a neck isn't scary. That being said, I have no opinion either way as to one being in a video game, but I'd say they should both be rated R or Mature or whatever. There are things that children shouldn't be exposed to, and I'd name Resident Evil games as one of them, just the same as a child shouldn't be exposed to pornos in their developing years (or at least until they are teenagers.)

"if you watch the Aliens series, the chances are whatever is horrible has to do with vaginas, pregnancy, childbirth, wet stuff. It's just all there."

The one really good rush I remember was at the dinner table. It was unexpected and scary as hell when I saw it. It does have to do with child birth I suppose, if you consider an alien being eating the hell out of your stomach and then bursting out of it as a part of the natural order.

I do not see the connection to vaginas though, unless they mean the Alien mouth with hundreds of teeth that are the color of blackest night. The kind of vagina that would eat your whole damn body if it could, that does scare me a bit I must admit.

"GTA IV contains misogynistic experiences while still being a sarcastic swipe at populist entertainment? Can it be that male gamers, while not completely defined by vaginophobia or femiphobia, still experience feelings of insecurity around women?"

Does a bear poke shit in the woods?

Also if a woman plays Grand Theft Auto I'm sure she will probably be running people over with cars, gunning down hookers and generally all of the bad things you do in those games. Analyzing the "do everything wrong" game that is the Grand Theft Auto series does not really seem like a valid arguement to me, nor does most of this article. This whole article does not really appear to be a good arguement simply because it only focuses on game of the year bullshit that is most likely decided by the dudes at various gaming websites.

 

[Grey_Area]

Issues. We all have them. I'm not going to discuss mine in this forum.

Slightly OT:

In relation to this article though, I have one abiding memory of a guy I worked with who exhibited serious mysoginistic flaws in his daily life, and came up with this statement about GTA III (this was a while ago). He said to me, "haven't you ever wanted to walk up to a prostitute, beat the sh!t out of her with a baseball bat and steal her money? This game is great!". I think he was actually serious too, at least, he wasn't really laughing.

My answer: No, not really. Not at all in fact.

I knew one escort personally (we flatted together, not as a customer) who got money for sex and loved it - no pimp, she workled for herself alone. Fair enough. But most street-workers are drug dependant, abused and under-privileged women who are beaten by their pimps for not working hard enough and refused access to anything like what most of us would consider to be a normal life. Why the hell would I want to assault women in this situation? (Even simulated - the fact that GTA III went for some form of realism means that there is a part of the brain considering this as an appropriate action). Point me in the direction of the men who pushed these women into this life instead, and then we'll see some violence.

 

[webchameleon]

Freud was a weird f*cker. He thought little children went through natural stages of incestuous lust for their fathers and mothers.
While there is merit to almost everything said here, I take issue with the questioning of why a tentacle coming out of a woman's crotch should be any worse than one coming out of a man's neck. The issue is that you, Mr. Thomsen, are an idiot not to recognize an extreme phallic symbol when a tentacle is slithering wildly out of anyone's groin--particularly in an article that examines video-game gender politics.