An article from a former sjw woman and a gamer.

[NuclearKangaroo]

but there are other ways to make those kind of observations, inform the player about themes in the game, without necessarily calling the game worse for it

There are, but as "worse" is subjective, anybody's criteria are valid-- so long as they relate to a fundamental part of the game.

If I was to read a review, I would want it to focus on narrative, as it's an important element in my enjoyment of the product.

i dont agree i think games should be reviewed by their merits as games, hwta happens with games and stories, is that usually the game sacrifices gameplay in order to tell a story, therefore is that story does not make up for the amount of gameplay sacrified, its a valid criticism

if bayonettas design affected gameplay (and this does happen in games, sometimes bad design can make enemies harder to read for instance) i think the complains directed at the character would be valid

i suck at horror games, im a huge wuss, i was even scared by okami at one point

Out of interest, which part was it? If it was the sunken ghost ship, that's fair enough, that part's pretty spoopy.[/quote]

you remember that part with the sea serpent? i was drawing lilypads on the ocean to get to this Dark and Scary? island on the other side of the beach, i knew the sea serpent attacked you if you tried to do this, and the suspense of that thing going for me grew larger and larger as i approached the island, i was legitimately spook'd

 

[Erttheking]

The two aren't necessarily separate though. For example say a game has story as a main focus. Now that there's a female character, the only one with a name, and despite being made out to be a great soldier, she contributes minimally to the plot, helps you on two occasions, one of which I never really felt like she was making a difference, gets kidnapped and has to be rescued by the less experienced main hero, she has sex with the hero despite the fact that she was coldly mocking him when they were first partnered up and flat out said that "(my ass) is way out of your league" and then drops off the face of the Earth right before the big final battle.

Because that word for word is my experience with Metro Last Light. The writing is a major selling point for me in that game, and 95% of the time it handled it beautifully, but MAN did they drop the ball with Anna. When she's the only female character that gets a name, and all the other women in the Metro are caretakers, prostitutes or victims, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not even at least one guarding her home with a shotgun? No conscripts in the Communist army that has clearly shown it doesn't care about preserving its population and is based on the Red Army? Which actually had women in its ranks? The problem is that sexism and bad writing tend to go hand in hand. Like it did here. I'm glad Angry Joe brought this up in his review, because it takes me out of the story when you're forced to go into a strip club (Even in the post apocalyptic Russian Metro I can't be free of strip clubs can i?) and are treated to a mandatory close up of a dancer's tits, it makes me want to roll my eyes so hard they pop out. Because it's very immature writing in a game that sells itself on mature writing. It hurts the game as a whole and can't really be separated from the rest.

Fear has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I suck at horror games to, and while I would think I would try to force my way through one, I can understand abstaining if you just can't get through it. But that's because the reviewer simply can't get through it and implies he's just not good with horror games. I imagine plenty of people who criticize sexism in games are plenty familiar with the games they play. Heck, the Bayonetta 2 review all but states that the reviewer played the last one.

in that case is a matter of bad characters from what i can see, would the game be any better if the roles were reversed?

a game can be "sexist" and have a good story, theres no reason for it not to, hell sometimes reality is sexist itself, i can imagine a post apocalyptic future where few women end up in the army and many end up as sex workers, like they said "its the oldest job in the world" and many women in need have found themselves forced to do it to survive, in a place where survival is a commodity i can see this happening. men are also naturally stronger and more fit than women, it makes sense an army is mostly composed of men, hell conscription might even be mandatory for all males, as it was in the soviet union

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia

tough being forced to die in a dark miserable tunnel is hardly anything most of those men would be grateful for

what happens with games that focus on the story, these games SACRIFICE gameplay, in order to have time to tell a better story, i havent played last light but i played a bit of metro 2033, the gameplay was contantly paused so the game could throw exposition into your face, now this is ACCEPTABLE, this is a perfectly valid way to design a game, a designer may believe that whatever story they want to tell is easily worth the amount of gameplay they are cutting from certain sections, but when the story actually sucks, the game becomes worse, because you sacrificed good gameplay to push that awful story in

whate never happens is that good games become worse if you add a bad story, if this story does not interfere with the gameplay

did bayonettas design interfere with the gameplay?

Not to sounds rude dude, but after twelve days I had forgotten I had even made this post. If you're going to reply to me, could you please do it faster?

No it wouldn't be, but then again DO you see these roles reserved? And what is with the whole "Well if the situations were reverse-" the situations AREN'T reversed! Why are you bringing it up?

Techniqually there's no reason for anything. There's no reason for it to not be sexist. There's also no reason for it to BE sexist. It's like saying that a game doesn't need to tell you where to go if it's still good otherwise. Yeah it can still be fun, but I'd like it better if I knew where the Hell I was supposed to go. And I'd enjoy games trying to tell stories more if they could actually right woman as human beings. And really can you point out a game where sexism actually made it a better experience? Because I'm drawing a blank

It's not that prostitues are inherently sexist. It's that if your game only has prostitues, housewives and victims for female characters and the only exception is a faux action girl (One of the iconic examples of sexist and bad writing) then you clearly have problems writing women. In Metro Last Light, the women didn't feel like human beings, they felt like sterotypes of women. Yeah, in Metro is wasn't that armies were mostly composed of men, they were entirly compsed of men. Even the Red Line, which was based off of the Red Army, which had no problems concscripting women.

No I supposed it doesn't hurt gameplay. Not sure what that has to do with anything though, because if story is part of a game, then the game is worse off. I mean if you just wanted to have gameplay and not care about story, why did you even put in a story?

Ok, they paused gameplay to tell more story. First of all, the rate at which your hand was held was considered a major flaw in 2033, which is why Last Light majorly cut down on it. Second of all, despite the fact that Last Light had a better story, it's sexism problems still hurt me enjoying the game, because it honestly is just bad writing pure and simple. Third of all, I have no idea what this has to do with anything, because you keep coming back to gameplay like it's the be all end all. It isn't. Games have evolved. They're about more than just gameplay.

No, but we're not talking about gamplay are we? And if Bayonetta's design makes it harder for people to take the story seriously (And story is a large part of the Bayonetta game) then it would be a flaw to them. Not everyone has to like something.

Games are not all about gameplay anymore. Reviewing a game on just gameplay is like reviewing a movie on just the action scenes. Even if it's a main selling point, there's more to the movie.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

The two aren't necessarily separate though. For example say a game has story as a main focus. Now that there's a female character, the only one with a name, and despite being made out to be a great soldier, she contributes minimally to the plot, helps you on two occasions, one of which I never really felt like she was making a difference, gets kidnapped and has to be rescued by the less experienced main hero, she has sex with the hero despite the fact that she was coldly mocking him when they were first partnered up and flat out said that "(my ass) is way out of your league" and then drops off the face of the Earth right before the big final battle.

Because that word for word is my experience with Metro Last Light. The writing is a major selling point for me in that game, and 95% of the time it handled it beautifully, but MAN did they drop the ball with Anna. When she's the only female character that gets a name, and all the other women in the Metro are caretakers, prostitutes or victims, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not even at least one guarding her home with a shotgun? No conscripts in the Communist army that has clearly shown it doesn't care about preserving its population and is based on the Red Army? Which actually had women in its ranks? The problem is that sexism and bad writing tend to go hand in hand. Like it did here. I'm glad Angry Joe brought this up in his review, because it takes me out of the story when you're forced to go into a strip club (Even in the post apocalyptic Russian Metro I can't be free of strip clubs can i?) and are treated to a mandatory close up of a dancer's tits, it makes me want to roll my eyes so hard they pop out. Because it's very immature writing in a game that sells itself on mature writing. It hurts the game as a whole and can't really be separated from the rest.

Fear has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I suck at horror games to, and while I would think I would try to force my way through one, I can understand abstaining if you just can't get through it. But that's because the reviewer simply can't get through it and implies he's just not good with horror games. I imagine plenty of people who criticize sexism in games are plenty familiar with the games they play. Heck, the Bayonetta 2 review all but states that the reviewer played the last one.

in that case is a matter of bad characters from what i can see, would the game be any better if the roles were reversed?

a game can be "sexist" and have a good story, theres no reason for it not to, hell sometimes reality is sexist itself, i can imagine a post apocalyptic future where few women end up in the army and many end up as sex workers, like they said "its the oldest job in the world" and many women in need have found themselves forced to do it to survive, in a place where survival is a commodity i can see this happening. men are also naturally stronger and more fit than women, it makes sense an army is mostly composed of men, hell conscription might even be mandatory for all males, as it was in the soviet union

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia

tough being forced to die in a dark miserable tunnel is hardly anything most of those men would be grateful for

what happens with games that focus on the story, these games SACRIFICE gameplay, in order to have time to tell a better story, i havent played last light but i played a bit of metro 2033, the gameplay was contantly paused so the game could throw exposition into your face, now this is ACCEPTABLE, this is a perfectly valid way to design a game, a designer may believe that whatever story they want to tell is easily worth the amount of gameplay they are cutting from certain sections, but when the story actually sucks, the game becomes worse, because you sacrificed good gameplay to push that awful story in

whate never happens is that good games become worse if you add a bad story, if this story does not interfere with the gameplay

did bayonettas design interfere with the gameplay?

....Twelve days? Twelve. Days.

No it wouldn't be, but then again DO you see these roles reserved? And what is with the whole "Well if the situations were reverse-" the situations AREN'T reversed! Why are you bringing it up?

Techniqually there's no reason for anything. There's no reason for it to not be sexist. There's also no reason for it to BE sexist. It's like saying that a game doesn't need to tell you where to go if it's still good otherwise. Yeah it can still be fun, but I'd like it better if I knew where the Hell I was supposed to go. And I'd enjoy games trying to tell stories more if they could actually right woman as human beings. And really can you point out a game where sexism actually made it a better experience? Because I'm drawing a blank

It's not that prostitues are inherently sexist. It's that if your game only has prostitues, housewives and victims for female characters and the only exception is a faux action girl (One of the iconic examples of sexist and bad writing) then you clearly have problems writing women. In Metro Last Light, the women didn't feel like human beings, they felt like sterotypes of women. Yeah, in Metro is wasn't that armies were mostly composed of men, they were entirly compsed of men. Even the Red Line, which was based off of the Red Army, which had no problems concscripting women.

No I supposed it doesn't hurt gameplay. Not sure what that has to do with anything though, because if story is part of a game, then the game is worse off. I mean if you just wanted to have gameplay and not care about story, why did you even put in a story?

Ok, they paused gameplay to tell more story. First of all, the rate at which your hand was held was considered a major flaw in 2033, which is why Last Light majorly cut down on it. Second of all, despite the fact that Last Light had a better story, it's sexism problems still hurt me enjoying the game, because it honestly is just bad writing pure and simple. Third of all, I have no idea what this has to do with anything, because you keep coming back to gameplay like it's the be all end all. It isn't. Games have evolved. They're about more than just gameplay.

No, but we're not talking about gamplay are we? And if Bayonetta's design makes it harder for people to take the story seriously (And story is a large part of the Bayonetta game) then it would be a flaw to them. Not everyone has to like something.

Games are not all about gameplay anymore. Reviewing a game on just gameplay is like reviewing a movie on just the action scenes. Even if it's a main selling point, there's more to the movie.

intership dude, that and these kind of arguments tend to drain my energy the longer they go on and i was discussing with like 4 people

i bring the argument of the situation being reverse because, if the story isnt better, then its not a matter of sexism, the story is just bad and the writers should feel bad

what i meant with "theres no reason" is, a good story doesnt have to be non-sexist to be good, i bet for the longest time in human history it was hard to find stories that treated women and men equally, that doesnt mean we should ignore all the good stories that have been written up to this point in time, or focus only in the very few that treated women with respect

as for the red army and women, well its true the soviet army was very progressive in that aspect, but even then women made up less than 10% of the actual army

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Russian_and_Soviet_military

the soviet army was composed of over 11 million men at the end of WW2, and only 800000 soviet women soldiers participated in WW2, so if you couldnt see any female soldiers in the game, well you probably couldnt see them most of the time either back in the good old days

"is just bad writing pure and simple"

well that isnt this the problem? si bad writing that just happens to be (allegedly) sexist, it could be more equalitarian but the writing could still be bad

i like that you bring the point about the writers not knowing how to write women, i think its a fair point that deserves to be addressed but from another angle

maybe the game doesnt focus too much in women PRECISELY because the writers dont knwo how to write for them, and they would rather fill the story with character they feel confortable writing than character they dont know how to handle, should the writers learn how to write good female characters, absolutely you shouldnt limit yourself to just a few archetypes, but just because a game has few of X characters doesnt mean its bad or sexist

Games are not all about gameplay anymore. Reviewing a game on just gameplay is like reviewing a movie on just the action scenes. Even if it's a main selling point, there's more to the movie.

dude games are and will forever be largely about gameplay, story can also be added, if the story doesnt interfere with the gameplay, the game shouldnt be punished for it

i mean painkiller has a shit story, the game isnt worse because of it because i can simply skip all the cutscenes, of course metro takes the Half-life route of storytelling so thats not an option, it sacrifices a little bit of gameplay to tell its story, and if that story is not as good as the gameplay that was sacrificed the game IS worse

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

How is a story any less sexist depending on the gender it's aimed at?

It helps though. I find stories that treat women like they're actual human beings much easier to enjoy than the ones that don't. It's why Fallout NV is one of my favorite games of all time. And plenty of other people agree with me. And to use your reverse argument method, does removing sexist elements make a game worse?

Less that 10% is a hell of a lot more than the 0% in the Red Line. Some people like to argue that it's because they were trying to preserve the human race, but I don't buy that argument because the entire point of the game was that no one outside of the Ranger Order and arguably Polis gave a shit about the survival of the human race.

Because sexism is a form of bad writing. Pure and simple. A lot of people argue that that grim angsty main characters are bad writing, and technically taking them out wouldn't make the writing better, but it's still a trend of bad writing to be criticized.

If that's the case, then 4A really shouldn't have put in so many horribly written female characters. Anna was a disgrace. But I don't buy that argument. I've been writing for years and to be a good writer you have to expand your horizons, and having a grand total of one named female characters isn't what I'd call expanding your horizons.

If the game doesn't want to be punished for a bad story, it shouldn't have had a story to begin with. Civ V didn't feel the need to have a story, neither did Crusader Kings 2.

If you had cut out the story of painkiller, would anything of value had been lost? And if a story is there, then it matters because the developer clearly thought it was important enough to tell and I'm not going to just ignore it unless gameplay gets involved.

 

[Silvanus]

i dont agree i think games should be reviewed by their merits as games, hwta happens with games and stories, is that usually the game sacrifices gameplay in order to tell a story, therefore is that story does not make up for the amount of gameplay sacrified, its a valid criticism

if bayonettas design affected gameplay (and this does happen in games, sometimes bad design can make enemies harder to read for instance) i think the complains directed at the character would be valid

But narrative is a part of the experience. To review story and narrative is to review by their merits as games.

It's arbitrary to exclude it.

you remember that part with the sea serpent? i was drawing lilypads on the ocean to get to this Dark and Scary? island on the other side of the beach, i knew the sea serpent attacked you if you tried to do this, and the suspense of that thing going for me grew larger and larger as i approached the island, i was legitimately spook'd

Ahh, fair enough. Fantastic, evocative game.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

only 7 days this time, im improving, sorry internship report AND freelance jobs, gotta earn dat bread

How is a story any less sexist depending on the gender it's aimed at?

It helps though. I find stories that treat women like they're actual human beings much easier to enjoy than the ones that don't. It's why Fallout NV is one of my favorite games of all time. And plenty of other people agree with me. And to use your reverse argument method, does removing sexist elements make a game worse?

it depends, i mean its pretty much the whole point of games like senran kagura, atleast the fanservice is

instead of saying a game such as SK is wrong because of the way it decides to despict women, why not just encourage the existence of games that do the exact same thing to males? if both genders are treated equally is not sexist

Less that 10% is a hell of a lot more than the 0% in the Red Line. Some people like to argue that it's because they were trying to preserve the human race, but I don't buy that argument because the entire point of the game was that no one outside of the Ranger Order and arguably Polis gave a shit about the survival of the human race.

Because sexism is a form of bad writing. Pure and simple. A lot of people argue that that grim angsty main characters are bad writing, and technically taking them out wouldn't make the writing better, but it's still a trend of bad writing to be criticized.

i disagree, sexism isnt a form of bad writing, is perfectly possible to write a good story in which women/men are passive, sexism is, at best, a theme, and i dont think theres any theme that makes a story inherently worse

If that's the case, then 4A really shouldn't have put in so many horribly written female characters. Anna was a disgrace. But I don't buy that argument. I've been writing for years and to be a good writer you have to expand your horizons, and having a grand total of one named female characters isn't what I'd call expanding your horizons.

of course one must improve, but if you want your players to enjoy an experienced crafted with the very best you got, you will want to play it safe in certain aspects, certain techniques and themes you dominate will be given a priority

If the game doesn't want to be punished for a bad story, it shouldn't have had a story to begin with. Civ V didn't feel the need to have a story, neither did Crusader Kings 2.

If you had cut out the story of painkiller, would anything of value had been lost? And if a story is there, then it matters because the developer clearly thought it was important enough to tell and I'm not going to just ignore it unless gameplay gets involved.

a FPS with no story is very hard to do, particulary in todays market, and again, they mightve wanted to write a story that focuses in themes they dominate, such as post-apolispse, militarism, survival, super-natural, etc

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

i dont agree i think games should be reviewed by their merits as games, hwta happens with games and stories, is that usually the game sacrifices gameplay in order to tell a story, therefore is that story does not make up for the amount of gameplay sacrified, its a valid criticism

if bayonettas design affected gameplay (and this does happen in games, sometimes bad design can make enemies harder to read for instance) i think the complains directed at the character would be valid

But narrative is a part of the experience. To review story and narrative is to review by their merits as games.

It's arbitrary to exclude it.

revenge of the intership

anyways, like i said, this is a valid point of view when the narrative itself gets in the way or gameplay, if this story is going to steal some precious hours of gameplay it better be good

is like going to a burger stand, and they offer you to give you only half a burger but you also get a whole taco, that taco better be fucking glorious or you gave away that half of a burger for nothing