I think it's a glitch, too, but that doesn't mean we're right.
Honestly, I feel like it was a matter of the pose's sex appeal coupled with the personality of the pose clashing with tracer's personality.
I will point out that any seductive behavior on Widowmaker's part doesn't really fall in line with her character either. Sniping is an incredibly impersonal method of assassination, and she's a walking corpse. I think the Black Widow motif on her isn't representing her character, but her backstory more than anything.
Besides they made Tracer's new pose even more sex appeal-y, and not only that, it falls in line with Tracer's character, according to them.
Palpatine has that sort of voice doesn't he?
Palpatine is the only good thing about the prequels.
Bluntly, I'm more looking at the Escapist (A gleaming oasis of civility, IMO thanks to the dedicated moderation staff), Facebook, and Youtube. Of course I can't name and shame, but I will say that my rant reflects the tone used by the majority of the "gamers" upset with tracer's change, among other things I'll get into later in this post.
Ah, ok, thanks for the clarification.
But honestly most of the outrage I see is the fact that everyone's pissed or relatively annoyed that people "couldn't handle a butt." The controversy is overblown, sure, but it stands in line with the genuine concern most gamers have that people who don't actually care about video games are trying to force changes based on their ideologies into video games. So as previously stated, any "victory" for them is a "defeat" for gamers. Of course that's dumb, but that's what we've come to.
Those "few folks" are drowning out any hope of seeing the more civil people. Infact they pretty much have drowned it all out. People enter conversations on the topic at hand, and these people are first and foremost the people seen by the people entering the conversations. They're setting the tone. They're basically the majority of people involved in the topic. So, they are the face of the gaming community.
That applies to both sides. It's unfair to act like the onus of blame is all on the gaming community. The vocal minority of both sides of the argument have left gaming on the defensive while also looking unwelcoming. Neither side wants to clear the bats out of the belfry, though.
I suppose policing might be a harsh term, and again, I don't expect anyone to really attempt this because I know it's like trying to drink an ocean.
I'm not really saying to silence them, I'm saying maybe, if one were to actually attempt the massive feat, is try hard to show that these people aren't the only representatives of gaming. That there are people out there that can be civil. Maybe call someone out when they're being an asshole even if they are on your side. As much as it sucks, going along with what the asshole is saying is more or less giving credibility to them.
Well I suppose this is a case of them feeling like it's not their responsibility to fight against every zealous asshole that hops into a conversation. Plus the current atmosphere surrounding gaming is that people are expecting to just be disregarded, disrespected or dismissed because they are a gamer.
I'm not chastising "gamers" I'm chastising the assholes. I'm basically giving them a shout out to let them know they're being assholes, see?
Actually thinking about it, why do assholes suddenly become gaming reps? Just because they are part of a gaming community or play games?
Plus anyone can be labelled an asshole simply for being critical nowadays, so what even constitutes an asshole?
Gaming at its core doesn't have an ideology, it's a hobby. So why do we need to act like a political movement?
A lot of the general attitude surrounding gaming is "when someone's being a dick they're not worth dealing with, ignore them." I think that mostly comes from the fact that in our current age of gaming we are used to mute and silence options to keep those sorts of people out of our fun. Furthermore there have been cases of one side completely shutting down the discussion entirely rather than wanting to hear gamers' side of things, so there is no other option appearing to them except to keep to themselves and put up as many defensive walls as possible to keep "SJW" stuff out of games.
Yes, essentially gamers felt like they needed to turn the place into a "safe space." Funny, right?
We must have seen different comments.
I didn't see any outrage over it, honest.
I'm not going to assume there wasn't any, but I really didn't see any.
I probably missed them.
Still, I mean, if you're talking about specifically in the Escapist, that's like, just one community, man.
We can't base the whole of gaming off one community.
I never said, or never wanted to imply sexuality makes a character shit automatically, as evidenced by later in my post. I honestly don't mind fan service, and I don't feel a character can only be sexual, or only well written. They can assuredly be both, but that certainly doesn't mean sexualized characters are all we should get.
And I never said or implied that sexualized characters are all we should get.
And in the case of Overwatch, we don't.
The truth is that there are options out there that many conveniently ignore for the sake of continuing to rally against games for not representing enough or representing them properly.
And again, what's wrong with sexuality?
I'm not talking taking it to the extreme with dental floss bathing suits or thongs or whatever, I'm talking flirting, or doing sexy poses or dances, or simply having some interest in sexuality at all.
You see this is why so many gamers mischaracterise the argument as "ALL WOMEN IN BURKHAS HERP DERP," because any semblance of female sexuality is often put under the microscope and criticized for being there.
And to me personally, characters are either blank slates to project onto, or characters within a story that are following a plot for that character, so I'm not the sort of person to talk to about representation when I already feel that a character's gender should take a backseat to how well they're written.
Not in large numbers. Hell, not even on a yearly basis. Rarely good ones.
I'm not saying the games didn't exist, I'm saying that they're far too rare.
A lot of those characters listed you don't play as.
They're still there. And in RPGs you are technically playing as a party, not just one character. Plus I don't see why they NEED to be playable, so long as they're good examples of well-written female characters.
Let me put things in to focus. I'm mainly referring to games where you can play as a woman from start to finish. Bonus points if you don't have the choice to play as a guy because the game revolves around the female character(s). yeah, you can call it moving the goal posts, and I probably should have elaborated earlier, but that's what I expect from games with female protagonists.
Yeah, I get the point of this vid. It doesn't make things better.
So you want more games that focus purely on a female protagonist, and not give the option for anything other than female?
Ok, I see, I getcha perfectly.
You don't want to count games that have women as an playable option because...any game that has the option to play as both men and women is somehow not supporting women, simply because male protagonists are more common?
Even though there were at the time more men playing games than women?
Well ok.
Nothing's wrong with sexuality in and of itself. It's a tool for conveying ideas.
The problem comes in when that's all that you get. I'm not wanting it gone. I'm wanting it toned down some, or used better.
Seeing a guy walk around in a suit of armor that is pretty practical, and fantastic, and then seeing women stuck in impractical armor that no sane person would wear into battle -all the time- is kinda unfair, and lopsided.
Dark Souls never had this problem.
Having one's guts spilling out because the midriff is unprotected is pretty life threatening, so I'd imagine any sane person would want to prevent that from happening. Especially when they take great pains to cover up other areas.
See now this makes logical sense. I can only imagine the midriff exposure being a thing if it was for ease of movement and flexibility, but that would only work if you're playing a class that would logically require that, like a thief.
It kinda screws with immersion, and it's a little insulting that women are often only able to look sexy in their armor and not really have an option to look practical when trying to dress in full plate. I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm saying why is it the only thing that can really happen?
Granted this sort of thing is getting a little more rare.
And yet people still complain about it even though it's going away. Well color me shocked.
Why would one want to argue against inclusiveness? I doubt those arguments would win me over.
you can thank the loud, obnoxious face of the gaming community for the lack of desire to talk. Having 1 civil person among thousands of people resorting to every sort of slur imaginable won't be doing that civil person any favors.
Because diversity is a natural result of variety. When you argue for inclusiveness you are arguing for a diversity checklist. "Oop, better make sure I have this and this and this, gotta make sure everyone's represented." It gives meaning to things like race and gender when those things shouldn't be a big deal. It should be the creator's choice to make their characters and playables how they want, and if they want to change something more power to them to do so.
But nobody wants to see creators be pressured into making changes because everyone was angry at them for not being inclusive.
Inclusivity is showing up more, and more, yeah. It wasn't always there, but it's getting there, and I'm at a pretty happy place with the current state of things, aside from some rare event like this pose issue, and a few other things.
It's a shame that we had to shake up the entirety of gaming and attempting to hold it up as "problematic" to do it, eh?
Well, first off, yes, Red Ninja was a terrible game. It had potential, but it basically wasted it.
Secondly, this list isn't all that great. Kinda weird you'd pick 2 of 13 years when gaming doesn't only occur in them, and 2 years doesn't negate my experiences.
Well I'm only one person, and I didn't want to spend about 2-2 & 1/2 hours just making a response to a forum post containing like every single example over the course of 13 years.
I'll freely admit laziness on my part.
Let me put this into perspective.
Think back to your days gaming in 2000 to 2013. All the resources you had back then, you still have them, and no more.
The lists of playable women, and if you don't mind me narrowing the scope a bit, games starring these women, are the ONLY games you get to play. Period. If you don't have the system the games are on, you don't get to play those. Are you happy with that selection?
Why does it only have to be games exclusively with women protagonists?
"I don't count anything that doesn't have ONLY a female protagonist as representing women."
And it's funny because yeah, I agree with you that it might've been limited, sure. Although a lot came about in 13 years, all things considered. How many consoles did we see in that time, not counting PC? I mean in 2000 we still had the PS1, which was back when gaming was still primarily male-dominated.
But then nobody said anything until not too long ago, when gaming was really starting to develop and grow, and variety was becoming the norm, and by extension diversity. But of course then the regressives came out to essentially attempt to set gaming backwards under the guise of "improving gaming diversity." I really, really, REALLY don't want to even bring Sarkeesian up, but from what I've seen she was the one that turned the conversation into something to clash against. Had she not attempted to paint gaming in a negative light in such an intellectually dishonest manner, the conversation would've likely come about on its own, or alternatively we would've seen more female protagonists over time through civil discourse instead of making misogyny accusations.
If the answer is even remotely close to "no" then I think we might have an understanding.
Because I can just about guarantee that games with only male leads are far more varied in gameplay, subject, and basically everything that really matters.
I'm not saying I only play games with female leads, or anything like that, I'm just trying to make a point in how readily accessible they are, the quality of them, and the presentation of the female leads.
So what you're saying is, Cloud should've been a girl...
When most of the female cast members mainly exist only to make the male cast members look good, largely by suffering so the main guy can save them, yes, it diminishes things. It'd be nice to not always see women crammed into supporting roles.
Terra was a woman, and FF6 followed EVERY character in the party, even giving you the choice of who to follow when everyone got split up.
Every character in RPGs has a story to tell and an arc to follow. This is why I argue for every party member being a main character in their own way, even though there's a single "hero" main character for the player to directly interface with.
Plus "supporting roles" are just as important as the "main role." This pisses me off to no end when people see women in the supporting role and casually dismiss it offhand like it means fucking nothing.
A few good supporting roles doesn't erase everything else because the good ones are very much in the minority.
It's nice, sometimes, to play as the woman, and have all the power to save the world, and freedom to do whatever the game allows, and generally be in the role that the main, generally male, lead has.
Then maybe you should stop getting hung up on gender and focus more on playing the character, maybe.
Do you feel excluded when you are expected to play as a gender neutral robot in a game, since you are unable to play as a human? Or if it were a male robot, would you still feel excluded because the robot identifies as male?
Of course not. It's sorta strange that the girls in Senran Kagura are among the best written. That sorta sidestepps my point, though. Like I said before, sexualization doesn't automatically make a character shitty. Senran Kagura is also not the only way women get presented in modern gaming.There is the Evie Frye, and rebooted Lara Croft, and more than a few other women that aren't presented like the Senran Kagura girls. There's a balance here. It certainly helps that the Senran Kagura games are oddly well written considering the level of fan service. Most games with the presentation of Senran Kagura rarely have the writing to back it up.
I don't get what adding fan service would do to help the situation. The pushback is there because people are sick of it being so prevalent in gaming.
And not everyone shares that sentiment, hence the pushback against the pushback.
Adding male fanservice would equal the field just fine. In games where the fanservice fits the tone, at least.
Not every game needs fanservice, but as far as I know fanservice has only been prevalent in Japanese games, waaaaaaaay more than American ones.
Well, so much for Senran Kagura then. I guess we know which devs are going to decide to not release their next game in the west next.
Just saying. Duckface. Quack quack.
The bitching was likely because uncanny valley way more than anything to do with sexyness or female sexuality.
Unless you want to argue the duckface implied she had BJ lips, or something.
Well, when the face of gamers heads away from people screaming bloody murder, and going on witch hunts, and throwing "sjw" and "feminist" around in seriousness, people will give gamers a break. Letting a horde of drunken uncles greet the guests at a civil dinner isn't going to make people ignore the drunken uncles in favor of the few civil people inside.
Where the hell IS this even? As far as I've seen gamers are just being gobbed back into the pit of social outcasts from whence they came. Back when gaming was still young it was considered "for nerds" and anyone who played it was undeserving of respect or understanding from society.
DnD had satanic accusations thrown at it, and gaming was accused of inciting violent behavior in players.
Now the narrative has changed to gaming causing misogyny, and yet it's all gamer's fault for going on witch hunts and screaming bloody murder? The chicken didn't come before the egg here. A precedent was set that CREATED this atmosphere of witch hunting and vocal rage.
It seems to me that you're just affirming "no, it's always gamer's fault, it's always been their fault, they never wanted a reasonable discussion about anything from the start." I have some serious doubts about that.
About the topic I mentioned earlier, I was getting to? The new Baldur's Gate has a trans character in it. The drunken uncles are loose, and raising hell over it. It's like Mass Effect's LGBT relationships all over again, mostly. I don't see Baldur's gate being banned in several countries for LGBT content, but hey, I'm probably wrong on that.
So, yeah, there's more drama over people not wanting inclusiveness in a game, and blemishing the face of the "gamers" community and no doubt there's too few people trying to fight the fire. So, yeah, you'll have to pardon me if my view on the people I lump into "team 1" isn't getting any higher.
Well excuse me, I guess I'll go sit in my corner for not doing anything about something I didn't know anything about, since my failure to tell them to shut up means I am part of the problem.
And Mass Effect's LGBT content was criticized because there had been up to that point no hint that Male!Shepard had any sort of interest in a homosexual relationship.
Female!Shepard is debatable because you could pursue a relationship with Liara regardless of your gender, but that was more because Asari are justified in-universe as being the galaxy's universal remote (because they turn everyone on, ya get it? Ya get it!?
...ok, I'll show myself out.) but Fem!Shep never pursued any sort of lesbian relationship outside of her.
You could even argue this is evidence of pushback against compromising established character for the sake of pandering to LGBT communities. You could argue "well that's your choice, isn't that what ME is about?" But at the same time not only Shepard, but other characters suffer for this change as well. With every character now potentially having a romantic interest in Shepherd, it essentially rewrites characters into having an interest in Shepherd even if there was no established chemistry or interest in prior installments of the game.
Jack in ME2 made it very clear she has no interest in Fem!Shep, yet she does in ME3?
A good example too is a romantic interest between someone like Kaidan and Male!Shep for instance, when there was no chemistry in ME1 (he wasn't in 2 unless you saved him, and even then he only has a brief appearance) between them makes a romantic relationship rather rushed.
There were probably people bitching about the gay stuff itself, but I don't think people were hating on it simply because it was gay. There were perfectly valid reasons to be critical of it.
