CRACKED: "6 Sexist Video Game Problems Even Bigger Than the Breasts"

[Pierre Poutine]

I recently learned that The Escapist hates women. Which, in hindsight, is kind of like recently learning the sun rises in the same place ever day.

The sun doesn't rise in the same place everyday.
http://bit.ly/14ozUd9

If I told you I actually knew that but couldn't think of an appropriate synecdoche other than "the sky is blue", would you believe me?

I still deserve that for saying it, though.

Okay, I will defend Elizabeth for as long as I can. I believe she represents a deconstruction of the damsel in distress. Sure, Booker has to save her a few times, but on the flipside, Elizabeth saves him too [from drowning, falling off, and every time the player dies if you get technical.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF - no, I'm sorry. It's a personal thing. It's just...I never want to see the word 'deconstruction' again. Saying something is a "deconstruction" does not invalidate criticism. I think the problem partly is that nobody seems to know what a deconstruction is, just that Watchmen was one.

A deconstruction of a damsel-in-distress would probably be either 1) a selfish and evil woman who compels men to do everything for her, probably by manipulating them either sexually or by appealing to their sense of honor, or 2) a mock-Princess Peach scenario, where the whole needing-to-be-saved is actually an elaborate sex game. Oh, or 2b) where the damsel never actually got kidnapped, she just eloped with the supposed kidnapper.

Now I have not played a single second of Bioshock Infinite, so I can make no statement about Elizabeth's character, but I am reasonably confident she is not a deconstruction of a damsel-in-distress.

Maybe he should have said aversion, or that it plays with the trope. Anyway, a deconstruction is "When applied to tropes, or other aspects of fiction, deconstruction means to take apart a trope so as to better understand its meaning and relevance to us in Real Life" In this context, to say Elizebeth is a deconstruction is not strictly invalid. You forget that for a deconstruction to work, it first has to be played straight. With that in mind, only your second example is accurate ie. a damsel being 'kidnapped' while not wanted to be rescued. I think braid is the most prominent deconstruction, since it winds up that you are the villain, the princess does not want to be rescued by you. With this in mind, lets look at the damsel in distress.

According to TV Tropes, the damsel in distress is " A character, usually female and nubile, is portrayed as helpless and in danger in order to put the cast in motion. In particular, the cast is unified, putting aside differences in pursuit of the rescue." Now lets look at bioshock, as far as strict letter of the word goes, Liz falls pretty solidly under playing it straight. She is kidnapped, and you rescue her at least twice. However, lets look further into it. In the traditional sense, the damsel is, in fact, largely helpless, being the load for the party if with them, and the plot device if not. In this, Elizabeth is not a damsel at all. She plays a support role, summoning allies and supplies to help booker... who is a solider, and so should know how to fight better than a girl locked in a tower. She precipitates her own rescue at least once, and actually defeats what by all rights should be a major boss in a cutscene. At best, she is a badass damsel, someone who is kidnapped, but with spunk, but in my mind, she is more an aversion, or perhaps playing with the trope rather than conventionally playing it straight. If it were a deconstruction, she would be psychologically busted by her continual distressed status(which she isn't, particularly since she is rarely distressed) or be opposed to rescue outside of "im not worth it" related reasons. Yeah, im just gonna leave it at 'playing with trope' or aversion, since you are right, it is not a deconstruction.

Possible poor choice of words on my part. I used the term: "deconstruction" because I visualized the writers looking at the trope, taking it apart, analyzing it's components, and then putting it back together to resemble the trope, but not quite. On the surface level, she fits in to the classic trope nicely. Girl of Stature imprisoned in a tower guarded by a terrible monster with the only chance of rescue coming from our male hero. Needing to be rescued though on its own isn't a problem or something offensive. The damsel in distress trope becomes offensive because it implies that she is no more important then a prize to be won, and is helpless with no internal agency. The fact that it's so common is also a major problem. Looking strictly at Elizabeth though, she begins as a means to an end for the player, but as the game progresses, and the relationship builds, the goal isn't to save her to get the reward, but because it's the right thing to do. She also has plenty of agency, as decisions she makes have a great amount of impact on the game. I also don't buy that she's helpless. No more helpless then Booker himself at least. So yeah, my use of the word was based on her occupying a lot the accepted traits of the trope, but none of the problems. I also thought your examples of deconstruction were more just "direct contradiction".

 

[Ickorus]

She could be machetifying a rapist cannibal into sashimi, but if the hero arrives she'll instantly collapse into helpless tears, safe in his arms. Because that's exactly what happens.

Seriously? she's a 15 year old girl kidnapped by a pedophile cannibal and then forced to kill him and several other people in order to survive, if she didn't collapse in tears after the ordeal was over and she was safe I think that would be more worrying and much less realistic.

BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth was born with the ability to tear portals in time and space, then learned to pick locks anyway, then sat patiently in prison until a penis arrived to save her.

If you paid even the slightest bit of attention to the plot you'd know the tower was designed to prevent her from using her portals to escape, by the end of the game I'd say she was the most inspiring character and more than proved herself capable.

The Tomb Raider reboot reduced Lara to a puddle of tears. Every time she cried, missed a jump (and then cried), or killed a person in self-defense (followed by crying)

How dare they try writing a deeper character! Seriously, Lara had every right to cry, she's a young person who basically has everything she cares about violently torn away from her and you know what? She responds to this in a very human manner but endures where others (myself included) would likely give up.

It seems like the author just wants to perpetuate the same tired old one-dimensional characters that we have been dealing with for ages rather than deepening both male and female characters going into the future and doing away with archetypal characters altogether.

I personally think this year has been great for character writing, in all three games mentioned in my post we have had deeper, more nuanced and individual characters of both genders than we have ever really experienced in the past and that is very much a win in my books; I think overcoming their weaknesses was what made those characters real heroes.

 

[Pierre Poutine]

Not even having played BS:Infinite [small]snickersnicker[/small] or Last of Us, I can still say Ellie and Elizabeth are not "damsels."

I can see why people might think this (note I have only played BS:I, so I will only talk about that one), after all, Elizabeth is super powerful, she has a lot of willpower, and she ends up guiding the protagonist by the end. But lets get down to brass tacks here:

* The game still requires you to rescue her from her tower, and the purpose is to get her away from the city.
* For all her strengths, Elizabeth is still the wide eyed, naive, emotionally fragile one who cries over murder, whereas the male protagonist slaughters people by the thousand without batting an eye (regardless of his past regrets about Wounded Knee).
* The story still contrives reasons for why she must spend half the game with a massive cleavage hanging out. She is not the main character.
* The game is still Booker's story, and not her own. Though she is always in the gamer's gaze, the plot is about Booker's actions, Booker's past, and Booker's emotional arc. In other words, the man is still the agent of the story, and the woman's role is ancillary/supporting.

Note that there isn't anything inherently wrong with a female damsel, in and of itself, and Bioshock Infinite probably has the best written damsel character of any game I have ever played. But she exists after decades of games and hundreds of other damsels. It was inconceivable for the writers to make a game in which the protagonist is a mother - even in a fictional setting wherein writers have the opportunity to create any character dynamic they want, they still refer to the same old stock roles. That's why people get frustrated with Bioshock and The Last of Us; the writers are clearly very talented, but they still lack the guts or the vision to see beyond making another boy rescues girl story.

-The game does require you to rescue her from the tower, but Booker's purpose changes from him trying to rescue her as a means to end; to trying to help her because he feels it's the right thing to do.
-I see this less as a weakness of Elizabeth, and more on how jaded Booker was with murder. His horrible acts are what set the whole story in motion after all. Elizabeth meanwhile is very sheltered and innocent. Her crying over murder and violence helps humanize her. The fact that she gets used to it can be another commentary on how easy it is to get used to the violence. Despite that, one of the subtle design choices I liked was how whenever you performed an execution, Elizabeth would let out a gasp of shock at the brutality. She's not completely jaded like Booker is.
-My experience was interesting. I knew of the costume and it's cleavage before playing the game. That outfit only comes into play near the last third, and by then, I got so used and invested in Elizabeth as a character, that I didn't notice [well, I noticed, but I didn't care] about what she was wearing.
-I agree that ultimately, it's Booker's story. I like what Moviebob said about Bioshock Infinite and how it misdirects the player. They set up the game as Booker being some interchangeable gruff guy, with all the story being about Elizabeth and Columbia. Yet, they pull the rug out in the end where all of the story exists because of Booker's actions. In that sense, all other characters I supporting. I wonder if some of the disappointment about Elizabeth is because people thought they were getting her story, when it turned out to be someone else's. Also while Booker is the main story agent, Elizabeth still has plenty of agency, and her decisions effect the plot in many ways, so I think she's more then just supporting.

Anyhow, that's just how I saw it. Not saying your interpretation was wrong, just that I saw it a bit differently.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

It's always odd that they mention Last of Us in these lists. When I first played the demo, my reaction was: "Oh boy. Another "expendable male" game." Honestly, if you decide to look at the game with the same nitpicky view that this article has, I would argue that this trope never really fades from the game.

And, speaking of Last of Us, I would like to point out that when:

Spoiler

You have a male protector and a young girl as the main cast and the male protector has to be sacrificed, you get The Walking Dead ending.
You have a male protector and a young girl as the main cast and the young girl has to be sacrificed, you get The Last of Us ending.

So, yeah. Last of Us isn't really a good one to prove this point.

Metroid Other M, on the other hand... The scene where Samus had to be saved from Ridley by Manthony Higgs alone could have filled this article.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

#4 Torn feelings. Everyone hates the fuck out of Metroid Other M, myself included, but Tomb Raider? Lara comes off as vulnerable at times yeah, but how is that a BAD thing? It's dedicated to making her a more Human character. So more often than not we get boring bland characters that commit genoicde single handily and spout off one liners, I personally would like to see more main characters curl up into balls and cry. I guess that's because of the lack of male weakness in games, but to be honest I think that's more of a problem than anything else. Vulnerable =/= powerless. It CAN equal that (FUCK YOU OTHER M) but not necessarily.

The biggest part of the problem when it comes to male characters is that they are generally of the heroic archetype if they have a developed and consistent personality at all. They are the fundamental force of the universe that is going to save the day; their forward progress all but guaranteed by god like powers. For such a character to show emotional frailty or any other detestable human weakness would be utterly out of place.

Fundamentally, the problem in a nutshell is simple: most action games are so overwrought and the danger presented so dire that were a character to demonstrate true weakness, it would be less believable that they would actually manage to save the day.

#3 I haven't played Heavy Rain but that scene where they design a woman to fight in her underwear...eh...why?

It's actually worse than that.

Spoiler

It's actually a dream.

They're generic faceles guys, nothing of value will be lost. Token representation in a way is more insulting than no representation at all, especially when it's kinda segregated.

There is a value present in that the classes are instantly identifiable based on silhouette alone. Introducing 9 new ones to the mix, unless done carefully, could undermine that key component of art design.

To be perfectly honest I'm kinda burnt out on the whole sexism debate. It's just cycles of shouting, raging and banning. Writing this post out turned to be a massive chore. What should we do? Hell if I know. Though I will say that sometimes the whole thing feels like that one episode of South Park where Randy dropped the N-bomb on Wheel of Fortune where people were more concerned about being accused of being racist than actual racism.

My problem with the debate is that there is never actually a debate. You can point out, for example, that there is a fundamental difference between a strong female character and a strong character who happens to be female and people will rage at the distinction on both sides of argument which highlights the problem. No one is discussing how to fix the problem: at best they're arguing about if the problem even exists.

While the vitriol summoned every time the discussion surfaces seems like self-evident support of the supposition that there exists with the industry and the fan base some element of segregation between the genders to me, I suppose not everyone sees the same.

One last comment about the article is that the author seems to make a number of factual errors along the way. Elizabeth was not "born" with the ability to tear portals, for example - that's a result of how she came to be in the same world as Columbia (though, you guessed it, a portal). The view of Laura, while factually accurate, seems to ignore the fact that she manages to survive brutal injury while actively being hunted all while everyone she cares about gets killed around her. That's enough to break most people completely. Laura? She cried while tending her wounds but rather than give in to the horror she grimly went forward and faced it. That they story acknowledges that's she's tired and hurt and scared and gaining emotional wounds as rapidly as physical ones and still resolves to fight show's more strength than if they never demonstrated she was vulnerable to begin with.

Nathan Drake doesn't prove himself a hero; he's a sociopathic lunatic who murders scores of people while making bad jokes to himself.

Even movies tend to show vulnerability in the main characters. In the first Die Hard, John not only takes death of people he didn't even know hard, as he collects wounds over the course of the night he eventually reveals his fear that he isn't going to make it out alive. Lethal Weapon shows how broken Mel Gibson's character really is well before the climax. Many of the great action movies of yore understood that humanizing the character elevates the struggle.

Video games are simply stuck in a place where the scale is beyond mere mortals. You strive against gods and men who would be gods. You thwart extinction and build an empire. You often represent a martial force capable of taking on entire armies alone. This, as much as anything, is the problem. Video games simply tell stories that are far too big to deal well with the trivial concerns that the resident demigod might have with morality or fear.

But, then, that does beg the question. Since you need to build systems in order to have a game, just how would you make an interesting game about Die Hard that had you set against a mere dozen men?

 

[Razorthe6249th]

Hello, I'm nobody.
I've been a long time fan and reader of Cracked and it's weird how they're generally looked down upon wherever I look (which is honestly like, here and 4chan). For the most part their articles usually hit the spot for me, when they're funny or informative. Some friends will sneer when I quote Cracked "It's a comedy website!" but I argue that generally, their shit is researched. The links are right there. You can tell when something is real and when it's a joke they've written (this usually happens every sentence).

Having said that, that article was pretty awful. It was an agenda disguised as an article and the jokes were weak. It's hard to tell if the writer went anonymous because they were afraid of the weight of the internet bearing down on them, or if they knew the article was well below Cracked's standards. What I found rather unpleasant though, if you look at the one small thread on the Cracked forums about it, it's mostly a few people patting the author on the back and, with one big brush, painting the entirety of the comments as misogynistic filth. There's even a few of Cracked's big names in there. David Wong, generally a funny man, said something on the lines of "A lot of people disagree with it and that makes it a good article" which leaves a bit of a bad taste. Viewing the top rated comments, you'll actually find quite a lot of good comments, sensible discussion where some thought none could flourish.

The article itself, well. It has its points. It definitely used some poor examples and needed more funny, but sexism is a thing, sure. Men saving women as a scenario happens too much. Games need more strong female characters. Some games have written female characters incredibly poorly. Ivy's breasts are a bit on the gross-side of large. In class based games, both genders should be available*.

Sexual violence against women? Should sexual violence be in video games? Is rape a no-go zone where murder is fine?
I don't really know. Maybe there should be an equal amount of sexual violence against men. It's not like that doesn't happen IRL. Rape certainly shouldn't be in every game, sure. I haven't played TLOU or Heavy Rain but I think the way the way the topic is handled there is done well enough. As for Hotline Miami 2, if you take it out of context (and it was) it looked bad. That really applies to everything though.

One last thing: I didn't like how the author conveniently ignored the fact that when Metroid: Other M came out, the story was reviled by pretty much everyone. Nobody liked that strong badass Samus had been turned into little babby girl who needs a man's permission to do things. Nobody praised the story, hell a lot of people don't consider it canon. That's got to be at least a small win for feminism. It should also be kept in mind that it was written by a Japanese team, and there's going to be a cultural dissonance between them and the West.

I think this could all have been avoided if Fenix Clay wrote the article. He's like Seanbaby's lovechild or something, I love that guy.

 

[romxxii]

So even Cracked has got in on the gender issues in videogames bandwagon: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-sexist-video-game-problems-even-bigger-than-breasts_p1/#ixzz2fNWnPC8E

Amongst other things, they claim that The Last Of Us and BioShock Infinite are sexist because Ellie and Elizabeth need the help of the male main character. >.<

I have to say that this train-wreck of face-plant after face-plant, over this stuff, coming from one gaming journalism outlet after another is quite the spectacle to behold.

I really feel like this is what's happening:

Spoiler: The state of gaming journalism today

Anyway, what do you lot think? Are BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us sexist because they feature - for want of a better word - damsels? (This is before we get into the other "issues" Cracked brings up...)

To be fair, you shouldn't be taking Cracked, a comedy website known for snarky meta humor and forcing things into lists, for "gaming journalism" in any way, shape, or form. It's all just opinion presented as humor, though in my own opinion the actual list is far from funny.

That said, the author seems to be so pro-woman, she wouldn't even acknowledge Lara's character arc from sobbing crybaby-girl to chronic eye-stabbing woman of death. Halfway through the game, Lara stops crying and starts taking action; not just in terms of gameplay either, but in terms of narrative as well. Does the author acknowledge that? Hell no. S/he (or whatever mutant freak wrote it) prefers to focus on the early part of the game, just so it can fit her own narrative of weak-willed woman protagonist.

 

[Therumancer]

So even Cracked has got in on the gender issues in videogames bandwagon: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-sexist-video-game-problems-even-bigger-than-breasts_p1/#ixzz2fNWnPC8E

Amongst other things, they claim that The Last Of Us and BioShock Infinite are sexist because Ellie and Elizabeth need the help of the male main character. >.<

I have to say that this train-wreck of face-plant after face-plant, over this stuff, coming from one gaming journalism outlet after another is quite the spectacle to behold.

I really feel like this is what's happening:

Spoiler: The state of gaming journalism today

Anyway, what do you lot think? Are BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us sexist because they feature - for want of a better word - damsels? (This is before we get into the other "issues" Cracked brings up...)

Couldn't sleep so was checking the site out to see what was going on over the last week or so.

Without getting too far into any of the particular issues, understand that nothing in this article hasn't been said elsewhere. For the most part everything mentioned is a non-issue, paraded around like there is some validity here in order to get attention and generate traffic. "Let's pretend there are some kinds of issues with women being discriminated against in gaming" is now the kind of thing you see drudged up by geek sites when things are getting too slow. This was old before Anita Sarkeesian brought it to the forefront again and injected it with more energy than it had for a while. Even now in two days you've filled up 5+ pages of responses just by having this as a topic. It's sort of like how my Yahoo home page was running an article about a group of people screaming racism because Applebees ejected them due to their kids were running around uncontrolled, disturbing the other patrons. Something that is only covered because the mere mention of racism gets attention, whether there is any validity to the cases involving the accusation or not. It's pure, attention-grabbing filler, you'd need something more to even begin to have something to say. In the case of this article it's done by "Cracked Staff" and pretty much just recycles the stereotypical statements made by everyone else wanting to try and make an issue about alleged sexism in gaming.

To be more or less honest some of the specific examples (Spoilers follow) made me wonder If someone at Cracked was trying to undermine the statements. Along with the "usual suspects" like picking on "Samus" and Lara in their prequel game I noticed mentions are made of say "Bioshock: Infinite" which struck me as being funny given that Booker is literally Elizabeth's Daddy, and the entire thing revolves around alternate realities and timelines, but the bottom
line is that the two characters were carefully designed as a team and neither of them would have gotten very far on their own. What's more, Booker is very much the lynchpin of the entire thing.

At any rate, I won't go into the entire "women in gaming" thing point by point yet again, except to say yet again that when you look at fiction created by women, for women, it generally speaking involves everything mentioned here. The way female characters are portrayed are generally speaking very similar to how women, left to their own devices, portray themselves in fantasy. This involves having a strong man (or multiples, a sort of "reverse harem" thing is common), a tendency towards physical perfection, and usually a pretty sexy wardrobe to go along with it. Rape is a horrible thing, but being horrible it recurs as a bad thing or a threat, and to be honest I've found that when it comes to sex, including rape, female creators tend to be a lot nastier than the guys. To put things into perspective the TV show "True Blood" is based off of a best selling series of "Paranormal Romance" novels written for women, while the TV show departs from the books on a lot of levels (among other things it's actually tamer) you'll notice that you have a fairly capable female protagonist (with ESP and fey powers) who ultimately gets herself into trouble and needs to be rescued (though the situation does reverse itself at times where she does the rescueing), she also has a literal stable of boy toys drooling all over her, and let's just say sexual menace isn't simply an undercurrent. This series not being especially unique either, while all of them are different Kim Harrison's "The Hollows", Llith Saincrow's "Dante Valentine" books, and numerous others pretty much hit all of these tropes without presenting them as bad things. Indeed when it comes to garbage like "Twilight" you'll notice ironically that the critics tend to mostly be guys who go off about "bad female role models" while the girls are the ones who defend it and bought this stuff up to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars across various types of media.

I guess what I'm getting at with a lot of this is that like the old book title said "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" we're the same on most levels, but on others we might as well be from different planets. On a lot of levels it seems most of the stuff articles like this go on about are basically saying that it's offensive that the female characters are women, as opposed to being men. To a guy who doesn't see the appeal in some of these character traits, it's easy to project there being something wrong with them. Sort of like how a guy doesn't see the appeal in some vampire stalking some lady, barely holding back from raping and murdering her (via blood drinking), yet women buy up stories involving that kind of thing to the tune of millions of dollars yearly. Someone like Moviebob goes off about how totally messed up it is to have say Edward from Twilight breaking into Bella's house to watch her sleep and such, yet given how stereotypical that kind of thing is, apparently there is an appeal there he just isn't wired to get when it comes to fantasy.

At the end of the day you DO have women who want other things, but they tend to be a minority. Ultimatly the people financing media tend to look at what works, and what sells. You keep seeing the same set ups because they tend to work. Interestingly more and more women come into gaming with all of these "tropes" being complained about in place. Overall the thing is that it's largely because of how things are now, rather than in spite of them. Indeed the current form most of the tropes take has shifted a bit over the years and more closely matches the way things are presented in women's fiction than they used to. Overall your going to move more units imitating "Sookie Stackhouse" and her daisy dukes than by putting some flat chested female body builder with a combat practical buzzcut into a set of riot gear for the same storyline. To go through with this analogy in a video game the guys pretty easily step into roles like Bill or Eric, solving problems aggressively, and ultimately dropping everything to go rescue Sookie, with girls stepping into that kind of role, where the character still has her moments and winds up doing the rescueing once in a while herself (though not as often as she's getting dug out of whatever she gets herself into).

The typical argument is that there is some kind of massive brainwashing conspiracy to try and force this, to be honest when you look at the whole equasion though it's just not true. Nobody is holding female creators at gunpoint and dictating what they imagine, anymore than you see guys with riotguns at the bookstores herding women towards specific selections.

Now yes, not all women follow this (as I've said before), but understand the majority of material is going to follow the trends. Just as not all women share the majority tastes in fantasy, you do occasionally see media breaking the mould, but it's never popular enough overall to change things.

In short, it is what it is, all these issues seem to be good for is drumming up some controversy and traffic when things get slow. To be honest if things change it won't be through video games. Your likely to see things gradually change through print media (or digital print nowadays), then after a decade or so you'll start to see successful
stories get turned into movies, TV, etc... and then into video games. I wouldn't hold your breath though, since at the end of the day things that seem like they could herald a change like "Hunger Games" tend to be popular with a female audience because of the relationships involve (ie faking a love affair, etc...) it's just that there is enough action involved to also appeal to a male audience. The heroine of that story on a lot of levels being exactly the surrogate daddy seeking emotive little girl that this article talks about.

 

[Therumancer]

they dissed the new lara croft? a story written by a woman nonetheless who's known for speaking out about women's rights...

weeeiiird

Well, I doubt many will read or agree with the earlier post I'd put up, but you'll notice a general trend that when women wind up writing the results are frequently nothing at all like what guys think women are supposed to want from characters. On a lot of levels "New Lara" is more or less what you'd expect from women's fantasy nowadays.

The funny thing is that a lot of these complaints basically come down to the female characters not acting and looking like men... which only makes sense because they aren't.

I've been saying for years now that people interested in this issue should sit down and actually read a lot of fantasy written by women, primarily for women, a lot of it is surprisingly good. You'll notice that overall the heroines are not all that different from the ones we already see in video games. Indeed in many cases it's pretty obvious that the guys doing the games have looked towards the kinds of characters that work and tend to be popular. It seems to be a vocal minority of people in the media who like to bring this issue up again and again when things get slow to generate traffic.

See thing thing is that ironically when you turn a lady loose creatively in fantasy far more often than not your going to wind up with something exactly the opposite of what men and femnists think women should want from fantasy. When you consider things like "Twilight" and the "Sookie Stackhouse" books move millions upon millions of copies to women and inspire TV shows, movies, etc... that reap profits far in excess of most video games... well it's obvious what women find appealing in their escapism even if by all rights the guys raising these points don't think it's how things
should be. Those making arguments about "tropes" and how female characters are designed with the mentality of teenage boys with porno mags, tend not to consider what women's fantasy actually comes out like, including the whole "Damsel in Distress" trope as the protaganists of such stories oftentimes need to be rescued (albeit rather than being kidnapped out of the blue, they have a tendency to dig themselves into truly horrendous situations, which may or may not involve being kidnapped and held prisoner at some point). Look at the success of "True Blood" and the book series it was based on (the books just wrapped up), and the intended target audience. Sookie, especially in the books, is pretty much the exact opposite of everything of everything that Cracked article implies a female character should be, indeed she probably hits every negative trope on that list.... and at the end of the day will probably wind up generating profits to the point where she will inspire female characters aimed at women for decades to come. Books aside, when "True Blood" his syndication I'd imagine it will wind up eclipsing almost any video game you can think of.

 

[Playful Pony]

I would actually enjoy talking about male characters for once. All these threads about women in and around gaming never lead to anything good, they just reinforce the opinions people had before they came in, and get a bunch of people angry at eachother. I haven't actually played the recent Lara Croft game, but what I've heard sounds reasonable enough, sounds like a character arc.

When was the last time a male character in a videogame at first felt weak and desperate without suffering from a bulletwound or "hugepieceofwoodtroughleg" syndrome though? When was the last time a male protagonist cried or seemed helpless and incapable, without imediately freeing themselves thanks to poorly tied ropes or something. I don't play all that many games so I'm sure I must have missed something, cause I can't remember a single one. I think Yahtzee may have a pretty good point when he says that the only emotion your average male protagonist is capable of showing is grizzled determination. Certainly seems true for a lot of them anyway!

Maybe Max Payne? I don't know really, he seemed pretty capable to me, even when boozed up. In his weakest of times he could still handle a good 10-20 enemies. Maybe it is time to make some progress on the male character front too?

Haven't finished Metroid Other M yet. I know people hate it for the depiction of Samus, but I don't think one bad attempt should negate all the other years of her being awesome.

Fair enough, but I also don't think all the years of her being awesome should excuse that steaming pile of crap!

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Wow the arguments used in the article are so loaded I vomited in my mouth a few times. Did Anita hack the website or something? This seems up there with her level of inconsequential drivel.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Anyway, what do you lot think? Are BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us sexist because they feature - for want of a better word - damsels? (This is before we get into the other "issues" Cracked brings up...)

Since I have absolutely no idea who wrote the article, I have chosen to believe that it was written by a child who is currently trapped alone, confused and terrified in the body of an adult woman. Because make no mistake there is something tragically and undeniably wrong with a person who views these attempts to create mutually dependent platonic relationships between a female NPC and the player character, and writes them off as damsels in distress, as if in the end of both games the female NPC in question will return to the kitchen and fix the PC a great big ice cream sandwich for being such a good daddy.

Showing mutual dependance on and with the people your character cares for, depicting two people sharing their vulnerabilities and frailties is a sign of blossoming emotional maturity in the writings of an industry that is otherwise choked by flat, one-dimensional wish fulfillment vehicles.

 

[maninahat]

they dissed the new lara croft? a story written by a woman nonetheless who's known for speaking out about women's rights...

weeeiiird

Twilight was written by a woman too. Being female doesn't mean you can't create a problematic, weak female lead. Then again, its worth noting Pratchett is a more talented writer than Meyer, and much of the creative decisions regarding Lara were not in her hands; it wasn't Pratchett who got to decide what happens to Lara. Basic story decisions, like showing Lara as crying and suffering, would be made by modellers and designers long before she was brought in to put words to it all.

It's a article from Cracked that starts with the words rape culture. It should be taken as seriously as an article on Fox News that starts with a quote from Atlas Shrugged.

and not even a "trigger warning "

I must ask the people who tend to shrug/baulk whenever they see these feminist concepts discussed - what do you make of the fact that more and more websites are coming around to the view female depictions as a problem? The Escapist, Cracked, Rock Paper Shotgun - many of the websites I frequent are now promoting feminist perspectives, and for each, there are readers complaining about how everything is turning into Kotaku. These people previously came to the websites to enjoy the smart insights, but can't now stomach that they are talking about that wacky feminism business; that must create quite a cognitive dissonance.

 

[maninahat]

Not even having played BS:Infinite [small]snickersnicker[/small] or Last of Us, I can still say Ellie and Elizabeth are not "damsels."

I can see why people might think this (note I have only played BS:I, so I will only talk about that one), after all, Elizabeth is super powerful, she has a lot of willpower, and she ends up guiding the protagonist by the end. But lets get down to brass tacks here:

* The game still requires you to rescue her from her tower, and the purpose is to get her away from the city.
* For all her strengths, Elizabeth is still the wide eyed, naive, emotionally fragile one who cries over murder, whereas the male protagonist slaughters people by the thousand without batting an eye (regardless of his past regrets about Wounded Knee).
* The story still contrives reasons for why she must spend half the game with a massive cleavage hanging out. She is not the main character.
* The game is still Booker's story, and not her own. Though she is always in the gamer's gaze, the plot is about Booker's actions, Booker's past, and Booker's emotional arc. In other words, the man is still the agent of the story, and the woman's role is ancillary/supporting.

You imply that Elizabeth is a damsel and my assertion is wrong, then you go on to prove my assertion. Well done, I say.

I'm not implying it. I am saying it. Elizabeth is a damsel. She is better written than most damsels, has a fairly well developed character, but for all intents and purposes, much of the story is built around rescuing and protecting her.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Do people realize Cracked is a HUMOUR SITE. OH MY GOD, THEY DO THINGS LIKE THIS ON PURPOSE TO GET A REACTION.

Why? WHY!? Why do this to us?

 

[Vegosiux]

I must ask the people who tend to shrug/baulk whenever they see these feminist concepts discussed - what do you make of the fact that more and more websites are coming around to the view female depictions as a problem?

I might not see myself as one of "those people", as I do prefer to discuss things properly (but, let's just say I'm only human and the levels of exasperation have been rather high lately, so I have developed a bit of a dismissive attitude towards some, eh, contributors; but not all); but the question is interesting, so it caught my attention.

I'm keeping an eye on how the developments go, and if I get involved I try to address points being made and state my own thoughts on the matter. But I see motivations on a large part of people participating in these discussions as mostly self-gratifying and marketing-oriented, prone to gross (in both meanings of the word) generalizations and adversity, while genuine motivation to promote the betterment of society seems to be lacking. On both sides of the argument.

I generally have no problem with the topic itself, more with how it's presented in any particular instance, and with the fact that sometimes it looks like if people can't even make up their minds whether they want to discuss it, or just make references to it and use it as a bludgeon. I mean, I've held this outrageous position that "women are people too" for as long as I can remember, so well over two decades, but I refuse to wear the "feminist" tag, as it comes across as unnecessarily partisan to me.

That said, I do run high levels of cynicism in my life, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Yuno Gasai]

And three guesses what it is, six iterations of the same tired shit we've all heard before. Agree or disagree, this article sheds no new light.

This is basically my issue.

Fair enough, if more journalists were crawling out of the woodwork to offer new insight or a new take on things.. But they're not.

I guess it's just easier to reword what's already been said, rather than offer a new perspective.