Feminists next target; Battlefield 1.

[WhiteNachos]

Anita never calls GTA sexist to my knowledge. Just like the Hitman claims, this has little to do with reality.

If you mean that her Hitman claims have little to do with reality then yeah because they don't. She literally claim that players are expected/encouraged to desecrate the bodies of female victims. The dumbest part is that anything you can do to a woman in that game you can do to a man but not vice versa.

Also IIRC she called GTA sexist in the Colbert interview.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Like? Do you mean that one Hitman clip that everyone uses outside of context themselves?

I can't speak for how everyone uses the clip but she really does lie about the game in that clip. The most favorable interpretation you can give to it is "Anita is talking out of her ass and making wild guesses about what the developers intended."

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I don't remember saying she didn't do anything, or that she wasn't a hero. Also, using her position in the hospital to help enemy soldiers was exactly why she was shot, because it negated the protection offered by the fact that she was medical personnel.

Which no one argued. And that's the point. Plenty of women took up arms, or directly participated in smuggling, knowing full well that they can't enlist and that they would be afforded no protections that a soldier's uniform would provide despite performing similar duties. If a BEF or French soldier launched a raid to release captured prisoners, there's no reason why they stop being soldiers. If you as a spy/smuggler do so, you get treated like a spy/smuggler.

...no, she wasn't wearing a military uniform, she was wearing a medical uniform. Which granted universal protection, as long as it wasn't used to say, smuggle draft-dodgers out of the country. What she did was the equivalent of using an ambulance to retreat troops instead of tending to the wounded.

Which negates what I said in my first post ... how? For starters, belonging to a medical outfit provided practical protection. You could still be captured ... you were merely released if the medical outfit has no one to treat also incarcerated (as that's their primary duty of care) and you do not own credible intelligence on the enemy. So it was 'better' protection.

The difference here being: wearing a military uniform while in combat against other uniformed soldiers. Cavell did no such thing.

I'm not arguing she's a hero, what I'm doing is pointing out that she was executed because according to the law, what she did was illegal. If she HAD been wearing a military uniform, she wouldn't have been able to smuggle the men out of the country.

There's no law that states that a soldier cannot help protect friendly contingents from enemy imprisonment solely on the grounds of being a combatant. There's also no law that soldiers suddenly stop being soldiers if they cross borders. Being a spy during a conflict, however, affords little protection, if any... There was no real possibility of surrender. Put it this way ... If I'm a spotter in uniform, on a hill, I'll get captured or killed. If I'm an ununiformed spotter, I'll get captured and/or killed.

The point is ... that plenty of women did this stuff knowing the costs and that would be a fantastic thing to see in the game. And it's historically accurate, and it would also actually give the campaign some diversity. Stealth, nursing, intelligence gathering, firefighting, etc. There's noi reason why you can't have a historic depiction of the Great War and not have female spies, nurses, or resistance operatives.

Hell, the chance to play a smuggler trying to deliver weapons or intelligence to various people without getting caught would make an awesome tone shift to a trench run.

 

[Schadrach]

Oh don't be like that. I was trying to be generous by saying that there could be more. That was the most soft hearted way that I could put that, at best, 20% of games let you play as a women and that's not really a lot.

We both know it's well higher than that if you exclude all the asset flip crap and things where you aren't playing a character that has a gender, or where that gender is ambiguous. The other poster used a month as an example -- I'm not going to say that month is an ideal example, but I'd bet you it's closer to his 46% than your 20%.

However, this report shows that mixed genders cause lower combat performance.

http://qz.com/499618/the-us-marines-tested-all-male-squads-against-mixed-gender-ones-and-the-men-came-out-ahead/

Take from that what you will and with a little salt.

To be fair, the men in that study had field experience but the women didn't. I'd expect a smaller gap from similarly experienced men and women. Of course, who knows if it would be a smaller gap or no gap. Worth study.

And if there are more than enough female characters, how come they still face pushback in media? You brought up Life is Strange, the devs for that game had to fight tooth and nail for a publisher that would publish a game with a lady main character.

That their previous title didn't do too well had nothing to do with it at all, right? You know, the other one where they "fought tooth and nail for a publisher that would publish a game with a lady main character" because that seems to be DONTNOD's primary bit of marketing?

On the upside, Life Is Strange was actually pretty good -- not utterly revolutionary like some try to sell it (and the direction the plot took was only a surprise if you weren't familiar with any of the time travel fiction that the game constantly references), but it should at least make TellTale realize there's competition in their little niche, which is good for everyone.

Let's be frank, those cars aren't driving themselves and games like Civilization have characters too.

So even if there isn't an explicit character as such, you want to count it as a male character by implying that "car driver is male by default" or something like that?

2. The Target petition was made by former sex workers and spoke of acts against sex workers. It describes things you can do to prostitutes, who never fight back as I mentioned.

Outside of allowing you to purchase their services as sex workers, does the game treat sex workers any differently than any other civilian? No? Then why is violence against them difference than violence against anyone else?

It's like the argument that Watch Dogs is every conceivable type of bigoted because you can scan people and get a fair bit of personal info, and can do violence to people equally regardless of background. So you can literally murder anyone who is poor, or murder Jews, or murder every gay person you encounter.

No, even in the lower profile games you're more likely to find men than women as main characters, and as someone with three hundred games in my Steam library, I think I know what I'm talking about.

You really don't want to get into "whip it out and let's measure" territory here, friend. I'll say this, as someone whose Steam collection has more digits than yours what you just claimed is increasingly less true over time. Your previous claim of "~20%" might have been accurate in the 90s but it's gradually shifted. A lot of that is from technical constraints and relying on *heavy* asset reuse. More recently you have concerns about bad PR if you mistreat a female character in the way you might mistreat a male one (sometimes referred to as the Galbrush Dilemma, as a female version of Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island would be construed as deeply misogynistic, doubly so if we gender flipped Elaine Marley as well).

For a recent example, note the feminist hate directed at that poster for the newest X-Men movie because the big bad for the movie was choking one of the protagonists in the poster, and that protagonist was female, therefore depicting violence being done to them is supporting violence against women.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Sure, some unofficially served dressed as men to get into the military.But this came at great social and financial cost, because if they were spotted they would be sent back home. They would have been ostracized and never collect a veterans pension for serving. This was true with BG,US,GER,AUS,FRAN,ITLY because of pre-established laws over the listing of the opposite sex.

I'm glad you brought that up, because that's a perfect argument in favor of having a female multiplayer character. Including a controllable female combatant could be a teachable moment, one that accurately depicts an oft-overlooked fact about WWI. Even if the game included 10 playable men and one playable woman (who dressed and looked like a man) the devs could easily counter unfair criticism with cold, hard facts. Furthermore, they'd make their detractors look like idiots because a 10-to-1 ratio is REALLY high compared to reality, but that lone in-game female teaches players about a phenomenon that took place during the war, one that highlights the lengths to which some women went to fight for their countries. Anti-woman? Hardly! Pandering? Not if it's put into historically accurate context, which wouldn't be difficult considering history is on their side.

Then again, we're dealing with a game that glorifies America's influence in the war and pisses on the sacrifices of the French and the Russians. I'm thrilled that the Harlem Hellfighters get their day in the sun, but the wholesale celebration of America uber alles in The Great War is downright insulting to the countries who had entire generations - young and old - shattered in a wave of bloodshed while America sat on the sidelines.

Spoiler: A British perspective, from the Kinks' brilliant 1969 album, Arthur: or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire

 

[cleric of the order]

Personally I'd like to see some of the Indian regiments that the British deployed but honestly what the fuck does anyone care. IF they want to set it in those fronts and have those fronts represent accurate history that's admirable.

And the problem is, nothing we've seen so far indicates that hypothetical is the case. So I guess it could be hypothetically admirable, but...it's not true.

Big business is like that, which is what i was saying to the commie general (Zhukov), i would personally rather see stuff like that come down the pipe line then gas on about women not being in the front. it varies the location, gives a bit more depth to the conflict, displays places and introduces people to conflicts they would not have been aware of of course it also costs more money so making people fight for a couple female models makes people think they've actually won something. i wouldn't be surprised if this had game play stripped away where they can and they backed down and payed some marketing shills to stir some shit about it in other places. We are dealing with multi million dollar companies here.

It's also worth noting that the apparent excuse was that "boys won't find it credible."

What?

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Maybe. Though we're just talking about raw numbers. We're talking purely about quantity here. We haven't gotten into the quality side

No, what I heard is that it was purely because the main character had lady bits. Is it really that controversial to say that publishers are idiots?

Point out where I said that, all I said was that it wasn't a sentient car.

Measure it? The hell man? I was pointing out that I had a good number of games that I was drawing experience on. Jesus Christ, what's with the dick measuring comparison? Mistreat a female character the way you mistreat a male one. Yes, because men are so often stuff into stripper nun outfits, because situations like that are were I notice most of the hate coming from. Let's not pretend moments like that are treating the genders are equal

Didn't hear about this, wasn't it anything substantial? Because I don't really feel obligated to defend every last incident of a handful of people getting mad about something.

 

[CritialGaming]

Put women in games: Feminists complain about violence against women.

Uh...no.

You put a depowered, sexualized woman in a game and then have her get brutalized THEN feminists complain. Let me ask you. When was the last time a woman was an active combatant in a game, got killed, and people complained?

Aerith? Heavenly Sword girl? Sera Kerrigan? Lightning (lol)?

These probably don't count in terms of feminists complaining. But I mean the first one made me really really sad. So yeah!

 

[CritialGaming]

Snip

Maybe. Though we're just talking about raw numbers. We're talking purely about quantity here. We haven't gotten into the quality side

No, what I heard is that it was purely because the main character had lady bits. Is it really that controversial to say that publishers are idiots?

Point out where I said that, all I said was that it wasn't a sentient car.

Measure it? The hell man? I was pointing out that I had a good number of games that I was drawing experience on. Jesus Christ, what's with the dick measuring comparison? Mistreat a female character the way you mistreat a male one. Yes, because men are so often stuff into stripper nun outfits, because situations like that are were I notice most of the hate coming from. Let's not pretend moments like that are treating the genders are equal

Didn't hear about this, wasn't it anything substantial? Because I don't really feel obligated to defend every last incident of a handful of people getting mad about something.

Here is what I don't understand. What does a woman's outfit have anything to do with her being mistreated? Believe it or not, girls like to feel sexy when they wear certain things. Nobody goes to a nightclub wearing sweats and a parka. Just because those nuns were dressing kinda BDSM-y doesn't mean that they were like that against their wills.

For fucks sake, people seem to forget that these are fictional characters. Little more than animations tacked onto computer drawings.

These aren't real people being subjugated to physical abuse and mental trama. These are figments of a collection imagination whose sole existence is to tell a story. It is from that story that you should derive meaning and take lessons from.

 

[weirdee]

I think that repeated attempts to bait people into standing still so you can strap straw to them runs counter to everybody else arguing that they're not doing that, and that most of the problems are perpetuated by a need to continue antagonizing something that nobody actually fucking talks about with an end goal in mind that would be productive.

If you want to play martyr, you have to be more convincing. You can't just drag the cross around everywhere in full view hoping that somebody will do all the work for you. Also, it doesn't work if you accuse other people of being whiny while in the process of nailing your own arm up.

 

[Something Amyss]

Multiplayer characters are different because there is no emotional investment in them.

This is about multiplayer.

If it were equal we would see women in the campaign.

Oddly enough, the feminists aren't the ones arguing against this. People are crying "historical accuracy" and "muh immersion." The only reason this story came up is because the boys wouldn't like it. It's somewhat amazing to see a story where boys complaining about girl characters is somehow feminism's fault. only somewhat, because it's so old at this point.

But okay, show me the backlash against Black Ops III then. Hell, show me any backlash over women being killed in any instance where they were treated like the guys. And also show it was feminists who did it.

What?

The source of all this comes from someone who claimed the lack of female soldiers was an issue with the male player base and credibility.

 

[cleric of the order]

People are crying "historical accuracy"

I'll have you know historical accuracy is important and very rarely done right.

and "muh immersion."

See above, replace H.A. with Immersion, though this is largely relevant.

It's somewhat amazing to see a story where boys complaining about girl characters is somehow feminism's fault.

i attribute it to reflex, I've got feminist family members that called Brexit sexist and racist (thankfully they are distant family). And there was the Assassin's creed thing, they anticipate it very strongly.

What?

The source of all this comes from someone who claimed the lack of female soldiers was an issue with the male player base and credibility.

As in men would have a problem with women on the battlefield? This sounds like utter claptrap if it is. Who said this and who was it specifically directed towards?
I don't really see that being a problem with the player base problem?

 

[Trunkage]

I find it a bit ridiculous that they left out female combatants in a game that is already taking liberties with historical accuracy (no French presence? USA are the big damn heroes? WTF??).

In the end, this isn't a historical drama: it's a video game. Not serious business (although WWI WAS serious business). Who cares if players can choose to be a woman?

Don't you need to leave something for the DLC? Bring on the Froggies. (Even though the US didn't get in for such a long time and the French did the most fighting on the Western Front.)

Also, remember that publisher knows that the US will only buy something that the US are in. So they have to be there. And the only action that the US can make are heroic, so it makes sense.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Because sexualized violence is kind of messed up. If you stick someone in a sexualized outfit and then brutalize them it's just...I have no words for it. I never got the appeal of Mortal Kombat putting a woman in a sexy outfit, giving her big tits, and then making it so that you can rip her in half. Then again I never liked the ultra-violence of Mortal Kombat period. I am not bringing consent into this, so I don't know where you were going with that. All I know is that I'm quite disturbed by brutalized women in skimpy outfits, I wonder what the hell the appeal is (I don't think people who want to see sexy women want to see them violently killed, and I don't think people who want violence want to see it happen to sexualized women) and annoyed that it only happens to women.

 

[Gengisgame]

Put women in games: Feminists complain about violence against women.

Uh...no.

You put a depowered, sexualized woman in a game and then have her get brutalized THEN feminists complain.

You say this like it's something that isn't bad.

But yes feminists want special treatment for female characters in ALL games because they are female.

I put a depowered sexualized woman in my game and she's there to serve a purpose as much as a male that character is there to serve as an opponent simply to be to killed. You don't get special treatment, if a writer wants to use classic tricks to exploit emotion, kidnapped child or death of a loved one then I see nothing wrong with that.

You may be surprised by this but many works written by or for women revolve around the idea of the woman being protected by a male, almost as if they find the idea appealing.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'll have you know historical accuracy is important and very rarely done right.

See above, replace H.A. with Immersion, though this is largely relevant.

Then this isn't the game for you and women in multiplayer should probably be the least of your concerns.

But that really isn't the point as this wasn't about historical accuracy in the first place. And the context of my response had to do with the notion that "feminists don't want equality."

And there was the Assassin's creed thing, they anticipate it very strongly.

You mean where they actually ignored historical accuracy. Huh.

As in men would have a problem with women on the battlefield? This sounds like utter claptrap if it is. Who said this and who was it specifically directed towards?
I don't really see that being a problem with the player base problem?

Maybe you should read the news that caused this "controversy" in the first place.

 

[Something Amyss]

But yes feminists want special treatment for female characters in ALL games because they are female.

Okay, then. Show me the outcry over violence against women in any of the big multiplayer shooters. Criteria: to falsify ert's claim, you must be able to provide evidence of outcry that doesn't come down to sexualised violence.

The weird thing is, I don't see it when the women aren't treated as fuck toys. Like, I've already given examples, but let me go one further that She Who Must Not Be Named actually praised combat in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate.

 

[Yuuki]

Why am I not surprised a 7 page thread popped up about something so trivial?

I honestly think it would be only a matter of time before Anita Sarkeesian or any other feminists starts bitching about how game these days are discriminating against woman.

How is that a problem in any shape or form? That's their job. Let them do it.

You make it sound like anyone takes them seriously. You wouldn't take Trump seriously, or the tantrums of a 5 year old seriously. Place third-wave feminists in the same basket.

In the end, this isn't a historical drama: it's a video game. Not serious business (although WWI WAS serious business). Who cares if players can choose to be a woman?

Exactly. Nobody should care if players can choose to be a woman, and nobody should care if players can't choose to be a woman. Gender is utterly irrelevant in the scope of a game like Battlefield which is about large-scale warfare.

 

[Dango]

On one hand, this isn't the place to start adding female soldiers, that should have been done with Hardline. On the other hand, they're botching history so much with this game that female soldiers wouldn't be too out of place.

 

[elvor0]

However, this report shows that mixed genders cause lower combat performance.

http://qz.com/499618/the-us-marines-tested-all-male-squads-against-mixed-gender-ones-and-the-men-came-out-ahead/

Take from that what you will and with a little salt.

To be fair, the men in that study had field experience but the women didn't. I'd expect a smaller gap from similarly experienced men and women. Of course, who knows if it would be a smaller gap or no gap. Worth study.

mm definitely, probably should've pointed that out in my original post, though that was why I said to take it with some salt, it was more about the /attitude/ of women being alongside men on the front lines, because that study is clearly biased.