Grand Theft Objectivity

[Farther than stars]

I figure it's probably not all that bad. It's just a small vocal minority, going nuts as always. But then the internet has always been a megaphone for those kinds of people. Luckily most people out there are the kind of folks here on the Escapist and we can form a kind of protective layer against all the crazy.

 

[Farther than stars]

Lets say you played a really awesome game that was near perfect in every way. But lets say that, coincidentally, all the main characters were black or maybe female. No bigotry, that's just the story the developer wanted to tell. Would you really shave off points for the game not having complex and well written white males?

That's missing half the point. The issue would be different if there aren't any women in the game at all, but if all of the women who are in the game are basically flat stereotypes, then that's a problem. Especially when you're doing a sandbox like GTA, which is supposed to be a cross-section of contemporary society, you need to pay special attention to accurately portraying all subgroups within that society. A game like 'Spec Ops: The Line', on the other hand, is a fine example of a game where it's fine to have exclusively male characters, because the setting of war tends to be male-dominated anyway, so it fits better into the general perception of what that scenario is like.

 

[Psychobabble]

Lets say you played a really awesome game that was near perfect in every way. But lets say that, coincidentally, all the main characters were black or maybe female. No bigotry, that's just the story the developer wanted to tell. Would you really shave off points for the game not having complex and well written white males?

That's missing half the point. The issue would be different if there aren't any women in the game at all, but if all of the women who are in the game are basically flat stereotypes, then that's a problem. Especially when you're doing a sandbox like GTA, which is supposed to be a cross-section of contemporary society, you need to pay special attention to accurately portraying all subgroups within that society. A game like 'Spec Ops: The Line', on the other hand, is a fine example of a game where it's fine to have exclusively male characters, because the setting of war tends to be male-dominated anyway, so it fits better into the general perception of what that scenario is like.

Rockstar should have just made one of the protagonists female and then would have been able to avoid this issue. Look at the film franchise The Fast And The Furious. Strong female characters involved, no one has an issue.

Maybe, just maybe, women also want to feel empowered in a video game and experience the joy of the random violence of running over and gunning down innocent pedestrians and bludgeoning hookers to death with golf clubs. However thanks to the chauvinists at Rockstar sticking to their neolithic and neanderthal male dominated game atmosphere we'll just never know.

 

[Lieju]

Lets say you played a really awesome game that was near perfect in every way. But lets say that, coincidentally, all the main characters were black or maybe female. No bigotry, that's just the story the developer wanted to tell. Would you really shave off points for the game not having complex and well written white males?

That's missing half the point. The issue would be different if there aren't any women in the game at all, but if all of the women who are in the game are basically flat stereotypes, then that's a problem. Especially when you're doing a sandbox like GTA, which is supposed to be a cross-section of contemporary society, you need to pay special attention to accurately portraying all subgroups within that society. A game like 'Spec Ops: The Line', on the other hand, is a fine example of a game where it's fine to have exclusively male characters, because the setting of war tends to be male-dominated anyway, so it fits better into the general perception of what that scenario is like.

Rockstar should have just made one of the protagonists female and then would have been able to avoid this issue. Look at the film franchise The Fast And The Furious. Strong female characters involved, no one has an issue.

Maybe, just maybe, women also want to feel empowered in a video game and experience the joy of the random violence of running over and gunning down innocent pedestrians and bludgeoning hookers to death with golf clubs. However thanks to the chauvinists at Rockstar sticking to their neolithic and neanderthal male dominated game atmosphere we'll just never know.

I personally would have been more interested in a female protagonist, not really because I'd need that to feel empowered, but because it's rarer to see a crime-story like that told from a female perspective.

Women exist in the criminal world as well, and why would making the protagonist (or one of them) an underdog be a bad thing? It's pretty standard for video-games that you start as a nobody and fight against the odds to get somewhere.

Of course then they'd have to show the player character facing sexism (if they went for the well-written route and didn't just ignore it) and that would make some male players sad because it would interfere with their fantasy where sexism is okay as long as it doesn't hurt them.

 

[Tumedus]

Lets say you played a really awesome game that was near perfect in every way. But lets say that, coincidentally, all the main characters were black or maybe female. No bigotry, that's just the story the developer wanted to tell. Would you really shave off points for the game not having complex and well written white males?

That's missing half the point. The issue would be different if there aren't any women in the game at all, but if all of the women who are in the game are basically flat stereotypes, then that's a problem. Especially when you're doing a sandbox like GTA, which is supposed to be a cross-section of contemporary society, you need to pay special attention to accurately portraying all subgroups within that society. A game like 'Spec Ops: The Line', on the other hand, is a fine example of a game where it's fine to have exclusively male characters, because the setting of war tends to be male-dominated anyway, so it fits better into the general perception of what that scenario is like.

Rockstar should have just made one of the protagonists female and then would have been able to avoid this issue. Look at the film franchise The Fast And The Furious. Strong female characters involved, no one has an issue.

Maybe, just maybe, women also want to feel empowered in a video game and experience the joy of the random violence of running over and gunning down innocent pedestrians and bludgeoning hookers to death with golf clubs. However thanks to the chauvinists at Rockstar sticking to their neolithic and neanderthal male dominated game atmosphere we'll just never know.

You are basically making Cthuluspawn's point though. Basically, because every character in the game is at least a partial scumbag/derogatory stereotype, the only real way to give a character a lot of "complexity" is by having them be a protagonist. But the story they decided to tell doesn't really work that way. Michael wouldn't take a female as a protege, but even if you somehow shoehorned that kind of idea in, putting a female in that kind of direct cooperation with a character like Trevor would be... problematic.

So the only way to please everyone is to give every demographic a main character and tell a completely different story and/or a story where the protagonist has a generic personality. I mean, you can credit Saints Row for allowing you complete freedom of character creation, but the Boss doesn't have much to his/her/its personality other than being a cocky sociopath. There is no "complexity" there.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the GTA series take on a female as the protagonist. I just don't think it works in this story. And I really think this is the story they wanted to tell. Trevor is a brilliant character, as sick as he is, and I think that is what they wanted to deliver.

All that said, I find the wife in GTA V to actually be a lot more interesting than people give her credit for. We mostly see her from the bitchy cheating wife point of view because those are most of the interactions Michael has with her, but if you listen to the dialog from and about her, there is a lot to that relationship.

 

[DjinnFor]

Do you merely observe how well or in what manner a work of art puts forth its messages and themes regardless of what they are; or do you take the validity of those messages and themes (and their place within the broader world experience) into account as well?

Well, given that the Gamespot critic did neither, I'm not sure what your point is here.

Saying "the rampant sexism in this game makes it difficult to play" is neither a commentary on how effectively sexism is used to push a message or theme, or a commentary on the validity of those messages or themes.

It's just "ew sexism". It might be a valid response if sexism was the main theme of the game, which it really isn't.

The reality is, the game slanders almost every subgroup it portrays, yes women but also nerds, "hipsters", Canadians, the poor, the rich (specifically white men), drug addicts, et cetera. The only group that kinda gets a pass here is blacks, via Franklin. Blacks are portrayed negatively through other characters, but Franklin, as both a main character and also the most sane and well adjusted of all the main characters, serves to give black males a more benign representation. Saying "I didn't like this game because of the sexism" is like me saying "I found it difficult to enjoy this game because of the way they portrayed Jimmy", which is basically me in a nutshell (save the tattoos and love of rap), or "I found it difficult to enjoy this game because the only identifiable Canadian is a psychopathic redneck lunatic". The question is: can you as a reviewer look past your emotional reaction and evaluate the impact of the message or even the message itself objectively?

It should be no surprise what the theme of the GTA series is by now: shitty people living life in an even more shitty world; that is, the classical category of satire/irony. Or perhaps the message of how the morality of action is relative to the environment and the actions of those around you. As one reviewer put it... "people suck".

As such, a comment about how a point was docked off because a subgroup happened to be parodied, criticized, satired, or even just portrayed negatively through some of its representation in the game whilst the reviewer just happened to be a part of said subgroup* is quite unprofessional.

For one, it reveals bias: if the reviewer felt that the negative portrayal of one subgroup detracted from the game, why did the negative portrayal of all the other subgroups not warrant any criticism? Even if you take it on faith that there are only bad portrayals of women, there are still dozens of subgroups that are portrayed exclusively negatively. The only sane or reasonable redneck/hillbilly is, in fact, a woman: Maude. Hell, Rockstar even viciously parodies themselves (as software developers) through LifeInvader.

It also reveals a lack of critical thinking: why do the negative portrayals in GTA V warrant criticism in the first place? Did you even consider what messages they could be pushing or what themes they could be exploring? Can you even mount a valid criticism of these themes and messages if you think they're invalid in some way?

It also demonstrates a lack of objectivity: the only "flaw" that was presented was that it made her* feel uncomfortable. Of course it does, that's the point! If entertainment is to be evaluated on whether we feel happy when consuming it, I guess horror is invalid, as is tragedy and all manner of other genres.

That would be like docking Spec Ops: The Line for making you feel bad about White Phosphorous or American Military Interventionism or the Hero/God Complex that gamers tend to have. What's wrong with making you feel bad about those three things?

And what's wrong with making you feel bad about the portrayal of women in the game, especially as opposed to feeling bad about the portrayal of any other subgroup? Should the game favor women in case any reviewers happen to be women? Should the game even have any negative portrayals at all? And why? None of these topics were explored in the review.

It was just "wah women have no good portrayals" wah. The only "point" I heard made was that the negative portrayals of men "deepened and complicated them as characters" (no examples given, of course) and (implicitly stated) the portrayals of women did not. I guess the reviewer missed the part about Molly and Maude.

*Yes I'm aware "her" is actually a "him".

 

[RandV80]

Basically, game critics? It'll get better. Eventually the audience grows up. Right now gamer culture is still feeling out its surroundings in newly-acquired "screw you, Mom and Dad!" teenaged rebellion stature, and will mature with time and understanding. Besides, some aspects of the otherwise banally predictable GTA V review score backlash are actually somewhat encouraging, in a roundabout sort of way.

Unfortunately while the audience "grow's up" there's always going to be a new generation of young immature kids to replace them. And since unlike movie critics who have been around much longer their counterparts in the game industry essentially started with the internet, it may be broke for good.

And yes I know there will still game reviewers pre-mass internet, through magazines like EGM and Nintendo Power, but they were relatively small time in comparison. Actually it's quite funny when I think about it now, way back when before there was a name for such things my older brother in his teens was mad at EGM for some reason and wrote them a letter (they had a section for those remember) calling them a bunch of old virgins/losers/etc... and next month they published it! There response was something like: "Haha you're on to us!" Basically something that would get one quickly pounced on by moderators today, the guys at EGM must have found the angry rant from some dumb also-a-virgin teenager rather funny.

 

[RandV80]

I keep double posting...

 

[tmande2nd]

Heh I do enjoy the sheer mind boggling RAGE that some people have when their AAA baby does not get a perfect score.

"WHAT GTA V DID NOT GET A 10/10, 5/5, 5 STARS, ETC MY WORLD IS RUINED I MUST PLAN MY MURDER SUICIDE IN REVENGE!"

Honestly people its just a person with an opinion, who in no way affects your game, or your enjoyment.
I had a friend on steam who ranted for a good 15 minutes about how horrible it was that people could possibly prefer Avengers over Nolan's Batflicks.

When I said I did, he called me a "retard".
Then i kicked him and blocked him.

I honestly dont understand why people care so much.
Maybe they cant stand looking at the metacritic score?

 

[Kataskopo]

If the game tried to make a point about racial relations. GTAV seems to try to satirize sexism, but in her opinion it fails at that and instead just is sexist, instead of commenting on it.

Women aren't nonexistent in the kind of world the game depicts, there is no reason not to have them be well-written. It's not like this is a story about people in a nuclear sub or something.
If I wrote a story with a lot of characters and all the male characters were badly written, wouldn't that be fair for criticism?

A lack of something can definitely be grounds for criticism. Let's say a game has a small world, little variety in combat or character-customisation, a short story etc. Does that mean it shouldn't be critiqued for lacking things?

BTW, Is she angry? She doesn't sound angry to me, after all she praises the game. And why do you think the way women were wirtten was the sole reason she didn't give it a 10/10? In the first place it's not the only criticism she gives, and do you know her review history? (I don't). Does she give a lot 10/10 in the first place, or just if the game doesn't have any big flaws?

Grand Theft Auto V is an outrageous, exhilarating, sometimes troubling crime epic that pushes open-world game design forward in amazing ways.

Sure sounds like she is angry.

And she still didn't say anything about wanting 'strong competent female'-characters shoehorned anywhere.

Also, given the scope of GTAV, do you really believe there couldn't have been a strong competent female characters in it? Are there no such women in the US? Would that have been 'shoehorning' necessarily, if we're pretending that's what she wanted?

Basically, this.
She's not angry, she's not pissed and she's not gonna destroy anything you love or hold dear.
And she's not trying to fill a checklist or mandate anything, she is a woman and women make 50% of population and according to Xbox, 40% of Xbox Live users.
She's not asking for weird things, and she's actually not asking for anything.
She's not trying to destroy your precious little incorruptible game idea (and in the game industry, ideas are a dime a dozen so let's stop pretending they are holy and should not be messed with)

Let's just get that out of the way, because a lot of people seem forgetting this.

She gave the game a 9/10, for god's sake. It's a great game, most certainly Game of the Year, but there are problems with the story. Or rather, she thinks there are problems with the story, and how it portrays some characters.

If there was an FPS, and it didn't had grenades it would probably be commented and criticized on it, because some people think grenades should be a part of a good FPS.
Some of them don't have them, like Team Fortress 2, but they make up in that regard with other stuff, and specifically with grenades, they have a reason for not having them.

So yes, you can criticize a game for not including something the reviewer thinks it should include.

And maybe you don't think it should necessary include it, because you think the story and the characters are good enough, or maybe great. And that's ok!

Then we can have an awesome discussion about characters and themes and what do they represent and what do they try to represent.

 

[Lieju]

It should be no surprise what the theme of the GTA series is by now: shitty people living life in an even more shitty world; that is, the classical category of satire/irony. Or perhaps the message of how the morality of action is relative to the environment and the actions of those around you. As one reviewer put it... "people suck".

Her criticism was, though, that the game failed at being a satire on some of these things, instead just being sexist.

It was just "wah women have no good portrayals" wah. The only "point" I heard made was that the negative portrayals of men "deepened and complicated them as characters" (no examples given, of course)

She did specifically praise Trevor as a character, though.

It also demonstrates a lack of objectivity: the only "flaw" that was presented was that it made her* feel uncomfortable. Of course it does, that's the point! If entertainment is to be evaluated on whether we feel happy when consuming it, I guess horror is invalid, as is tragedy and all manner of other genres.

That would be like docking Spec Ops: The Line for making you feel bad about White Phosphorous or American Military Interventionism or the Hero/God Complex that gamers tend to have. What's wrong with making you feel bad about those three things?

A game can make you feel bad in different ways, though. You bring up horror. Let's say someone criticises the original Resident Evil for having horrible voice acting and bad controls. Are those complaints invalid or unprofessional because it's horror and so supposed to make you feel bad?

If GTAV made her feel bad because it made her feel like the game was excluding her instead of making fun of said exclusion, isn't that a valid criticism?

 

[DataSnake]

GTA isn't sexist for not having a well written female character for the same reason a Tyler Perry movie isn't racist for not having a well written white character.

...because none of the other characters are well-written either?

*Yes I'm aware "her" is actually a "him".

Word of warning: on this forum refusing to recognize a trans person as their preferred gender is a good way to get yourself embroiled in a grade-A shitstorm.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Tons of left-wing or right-wing people routinely knock points off of things that they watch for having messages that are particularly tilted in the opposite direction. It's incredibly common, and all that happens is that die-hard people on the other side groan for a bit.

And both groups are wrong for doing so.
If I want to know about how a movie like Elysium holds up to the directors previous movie, District 9, I don't want to have to go through some bloated article full of the critics personal views on illegal immigration in the U.S. (regardless of whether I might agree with the critic on said subject). I want to know how well the movie was made, that is it.

Now if the critic wants to start off their review with a preface that lets the reader/viewer know that the critic has a strong opinion on illegal immigration in the U.S. and that they have a difficult time separating their opinion from their review, that is something I wouldn't mind. Alternatively, a critic could attempt to be as objective as possible and write a "official" review on Elysium in one article, then write a second article about their own "personal" review of Elysium and how it does or doesn't align with the critics own views on illegal immigration in the U.S..

*Yes I'm aware "her" is actually a "him".

Word of warning: on this forum refusing to recognize a trans person as their preferred gender is a good way to get yourself embroiled in a grade-A shitstorm.

Or a good way for some people to impose their own views on anybody who has a dissenting opinion, regardless of how respectful[footnote] By respectful, I mean that the person doesn't knowingly try to personally insult transsexuals or people who support/agree with transsexuals on certain topics.[/footnote] they attempt to be about the subject.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

To rephrase what I said earlier, the Gamespot GTAV review is crap because the reviewer is complaining about an element that doesn't exist in the story (i.e. a complex and well developed female character). Criticizing a game because of its story is valid, but only when you are criticizing the story that is there, not when you bash if for not having a particular element you would have liked to see. Bashing a story because it doesn't have a particular type of character or story element is liking ordering a gourmet meal 5 star restaurant and shaving off points because it doesn't contain some particular condiment, topping, or ingredient you are fond of. No single food dish can contain every type of food in the world, so even if you order a "perfect dish" there are going to be ingredients that aren't in there. Shaving points of you perfectly cooked Filet Mignon because there are no fried crickets on top is not a valid criticism.

 

[CaitSeith]

WHO was bitching that she gave the game a 9/10. NO ONE, NO ONE AT ALL. People were using the score to defend Petit. We are bitching because she brought up political opinions that ignore the commentary the entire game was going for, and she completely missed one of the most obvious attempts of satire of all time. Still, Petit didn't see the commentary on social issues in persona 4, where the main plot was literally about the problems in society...and murder and demons, but that's unrelated.

Still there is a difference between "You are wrong Petit! You don't get it! It was a f*cking satire!" and to make a petition to get her fired (and let alone the crazy stuff that was in most of the comments)

 

[Neta]

WHO was bitching that she gave the game a 9/10. NO ONE, NO ONE AT ALL. People were using the score to defend Petit. We are bitching because she brought up political opinions that ignore the commentary the entire game was going for, and she completely missed one of the most obvious attempts of satire of all time. Still, Petit didn't see the commentary on social issues in persona 4, where the main plot was literally about the problems in society...and murder and demons, but that's unrelated.

Still there is a difference between "You are wrong Petit! You don't get it! It was a f*cking satire!" and to make a petition to get her fired (and let alone the crazy stuff that was in most of the comments)

Holy necro Batman!

How did you even find this thread?

 

[CaitSeith]

Holy necro Batman!

How did you even find this thread?

Pretty much by browsing old MovieBob's articles that I haven't read. I really didn't notice the post date until it was too late. But you are right. This dead horse already got too much beating (at least until it happens again)