Hitting the Club

Hagi

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Frankster said:
Hagi said:
I'm not saying it's unrealistic for important people to go to strip clubs. I'm saying that it's unrealistic that a character who, no matter whether you go renegade or paragon, is always portrayed as duty-bound and driven knowing that he's got no time to spare and that the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance decides to take some time off to stare at some random stripper.

It's the same kind of silly that exists in many games. You're on this grand epic quest to stop some evil wiping out humanity, it's constantly mentioned how dire the situation is and then you spend your time doing side-quests to deliver bread or find some pieces of lost jewelry, apparently lacking the attention span that right now there's a giant dragon/reaper/demon/whatever rampaging about supposedly killing thousands of people. And you're supposedly the only one who can stop him. And, being a duty-bound and driven character, you spend half your time utterly ignoring that threat.
Glass houses dude, considering all the superflous BS sheperd does in the games (playing FEDEX for every person in the galaxy that misplaced something ever, going to do non essential character quests, generally dicking around), theres a lot more to be riled up about if you really want to push the "hero is in a hurry to save the world so is totally unrealistic!" angle then stopping off at omega or cho on your way to meeting aria or fulfilling optional sidequests and staying a few mins to dance with the dancers or get a quick dance.
And in Me3 the sense of urgency of needing to go back to earth ASAP before the reapers destroy it is non existent regardless of the presence of strip clubs or not, you could take the strip club out and replace it by a bar or heck, a restaurant and it wont change a thing in the game besides there being no asari dancers and club music and people dancing horribly.
I'm hardly riled up...

I called it silly. No more, no less.

It is silly. All that you mention is silly.

Am I going to let silly things ruin the game for me? Of course not.
But I'm not going to pretend they aren't silly and I don't believe the game would've been improved without all the silly fedex quests and strip clubs.

It's nothing against strip clubs in particular as you seem so eager to claim. It's simply a complaint about the silly nature of strip clubs as opposed to the glorification in this article as some sort of hidden desire of malekind.

Strip clubs, like so many superfluous things, have no place in frantic quests to save the galaxy. Nor do bars and restaurants. Mass Effect was a great series, but I do think it could have been improved by maintaining a heavier focus on the central conflict instead of getting distracted by random people in distress, strippers and other things that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do in any way, shape or form with the Reaper threat.
 

Jeff Dunn

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stupenderifous said:
After my play-through's of ME2, I have noticed that I would occasionally stop by the local dancer to unwind after a hard day of saving the universe (sometimes several times in a row). Christ, I never really thought about it until now but titillation was my way of rewarding myself in game.

Not too sure how to feel about that.
This is pretty much what I was working with. I get that not everyone thinks like me or stupenderifous here though.

Callate said:
With all due respect, this article seems like it would have profited from a single visit to a strip club. Hey, you're never going to have a better chance to explain it off as research.
I contemplated it. In the end, I tried to make the article about how general societal perception of strip clubs clashes and/or correlates with how they're represented in games. So I figured not going would keep me on that track, I guess.

brmcconnell said:
I expect more from the Escapist: this was a dissapointingly shallow article and lacked critical perspective.
*goes to strip club to relax and let off steam*

Moonlight Butterfly said:
I guess you completely forgot about female gamers and what it might look like to them. I personally roll my eyes at the pointless aspect of video games pandering to male gaze and making me feel like the game wasn't even close to aimed at me. I usually grit my teeth and get it over with if I go in those places.
I make a throwaway comment in the last paragraph about it, but you're right. Things get left on the cutting room floor sometimes. That's all I say. It was in my mind the entire time I wrote this, but I had to stay on topic.

Thanks everyone for reading.
 

Iron Lightning

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Moonlight Butterfly said:
I guess you completely forgot about female gamers and what it might look like to them. I personally roll my eyes at the pointless aspect of video games pandering to male gaze and making me feel like the game wasn't even close to aimed at me. I usually grit my teeth and get it over with if I go in those places.
You're right, Moonlight Butterfly, GTA IV and Duke Nukem Forever are games aimed at men and not you.
 

13thforswarn

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This seemed to be a "no shit" article. Does the topic even need to be discussed? I thought everyone was on the same page. Of course it's us who receives the satisfaction of going to these virtual places, otherwise we wouldn't make the characters go to said places.
 

Lazy Bunyip

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I'm a female and I will say that I think strip clubs in games offend me far less than real ones.

The game strip clubs are totally lame and unrealistic for the most part but at least they aren't real women being objectified and degraded. Those women in the games aren't really struggling with anything, like substance abuse, violent relationships, lifestyle hardships in general. They aren't feeling disrespected in any way, and people shouldn't feel guilty or morally troubled about going to the strip joints in games as long as they understand that those women don't look the way real women look and that it would be offensive to treat a real female that way. It would probably be better if they looked a bit more realistic but otherwise I see it as a relatively harmless way for people to visit a strip club. It's mostly pointless, at least in my opinion but it's not hurting anyone.

Just like killing a bunch of civilians, it's not real but as long as people know that and don't have unrealistic expectations of real life after playing the game then it's just harmless fun. It's that getting to be a thief/murderer/shithead character as a fantasy and knowing that you are not anything like that really. It's kind of the point of games.
 

cobra_ky

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yeah i'm not sure what the point of this article was, other than a good excuse for a titillating splash banner.

i've had good and bad experiences at strip clubs, but overall i enjoy them and i have absolutely no interest in pretending to go to a fake one in a video game.
 

Moonlight Butterfly

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Iron Lightning said:
Moonlight Butterfly said:
I guess you completely forgot about female gamers and what it might look like to them. I personally roll my eyes at the pointless aspect of video games pandering to male gaze and making me feel like the game wasn't even close to aimed at me. I usually grit my teeth and get it over with if I go in those places.
You're right, Moonlight Butterfly, GTA IV and Duke Nukem Forever are games aimed at men and not you.
Yeah but they are fine to play (well expect DNF which is a pile of tosh) until they go out out their way to rub it in your face that 'women aren't gamers' When we clearly are and have been since the early eighties at least. These devs need to grow the fuck up and get out of their treehouse mentality.

If anything it makes them look out of touch even Saints Row 2 and 3 have and option to play as a woman. The question they need to ask themselves is 'Okay this game is aimed primarily at guys but realistically, will women play this game?' since most of the time the answer is yes then they should keep that in mind.

One of the best ways to diffuse possible sleaziness is humour (actually funny humour shut up Duke) which is one of the reasons I prefer SR over GTA.
 

Lazy Bunyip

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Moonlight Butterfly, I'm hearin' ya, and I agree about the humour. They need to aim for actual funny, not sleezy/misogynist funny. It's insulting for both women and men. There are loads more women gaming these days and it definitely needs to be considered.
 

Gerishnakov

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I only used to frequent the strip clubs in GTAIV because:

1. Let's face it, they're hilariously bad.

2. In one of the dances an awesome Rick James song plays.
 

grigjd3

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Hagi said:
grigjd3 said:
Was Richard Feynmann having to develop said standard model of particles on a very, very urgent deadline or else the entire human species would cease to exist?
Again, this is the silly part - not the strip club. This whole X days until the end of life as we know it - that's the silly part.
 

Hagi

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grigjd3 said:
Hagi said:
grigjd3 said:
Was Richard Feynmann having to develop said standard model of particles on a very, very urgent deadline or else the entire human species would cease to exist?
Again, this is the silly part - not the strip club. This whole X days until the end of life as we know it - that's the silly part.
That's the plot... The entire premise... It's what the entire game is about...

What if you were faced with a threat that could wipe out life as we know it. What if you and your companions were the only one to realize the full extent of this threat. What if you and your companions are the only ones who possess the knowledge and skills needed to stop this threat.

What would you do?

To which the developers apparently answered: why? Visit a strip club of course, what else?
 

Frankster

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Mar 13, 2009
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Hagi said:
But I'm not going to pretend they aren't silly and I don't believe the game would've been improved without all the silly fedex quests and strip clubs.

It's nothing against strip clubs in particular as you seem so eager to claim. It's simply a complaint about the silly nature of strip clubs as opposed to the glorification in this article as some sort of hidden desire of malekind.

Strip clubs, like so many superfluous things, have no place in frantic quests to save the galaxy. Nor do bars and restaurants. Mass Effect was a great series, but I do think it could have been improved by maintaining a heavier focus on the central conflict instead of getting distracted by random people in distress, strippers and other things that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do in any way, shape or form with the Reaper threat.
I actually agree with you there big time, a lot of the impetus of me3s story died out for me as soon as i left earth, it was really surreal... The sense of emergency had completely evaporated, you practicaly forgot the reapers were tearing apart your home planet.

Otherwise yeah misinterpreted you, i thought you were having a go ONLY at the strippers and dancers since that was the main example you used in which case i felt it necessary to add that they were the least of me3s pacing issues and dont feel they were particular out of character either depending on how you rped your shep. Between shep dancing, going to omega and playing illegal card games on the normandy with the engineering crew, there was room to view him/her as being more grimey and less uptight. But that was in me2 when there wast the reapers om nom noming planets. And in that game dicking around when collectors took your crew would result in tangible negative results.
 

Hagi

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Frankster said:
Hagi said:
But I'm not going to pretend they aren't silly and I don't believe the game would've been improved without all the silly fedex quests and strip clubs.

It's nothing against strip clubs in particular as you seem so eager to claim. It's simply a complaint about the silly nature of strip clubs as opposed to the glorification in this article as some sort of hidden desire of malekind.

Strip clubs, like so many superfluous things, have no place in frantic quests to save the galaxy. Nor do bars and restaurants. Mass Effect was a great series, but I do think it could have been improved by maintaining a heavier focus on the central conflict instead of getting distracted by random people in distress, strippers and other things that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do in any way, shape or form with the Reaper threat.
I actually agree with you there big time, a lot of the impetus of me3s story died out for me as soon as i left earth, it was really surreal... The sense of emergency had completely evaporated, you practicaly forgot the reapers were tearing apart your home planet.

Otherwise yeah misinterpreted you, i thought you were having a go ONLY at the strippers and dancers since that was the main example you used in which case i felt it necessary to add that they were the least of me3s pacing issues and dont feel they were particular out of character either depending on how you rped your shep. Between shep dancing, going to omega and playing illegal card games on the normandy with the engineering crew, there was room to view him/her as being more grimey and less uptight.
In that case we definitely agree.

The Strip Clubs were indeed a lesser problem, but nonetheless still part of the problem. I just took issue with this article claiming that including strip clubs in these games is somehow a good thing because some supposedly secret desire men have to visit them...

Since this article was exclusively about strip clubs they were the example I made.

Strip clubs don't automatically make a game better, only if they actually fit within the context, and not all men have some secret hidden desire to visit them it society didn't make it taboo. Especially since I doubt actual real strip clubs share very much at all with those seen in games where the dancers are excited and very happy with their jobs, the local crime lords lead glamorous lives and the clientele have content and rewarding existences. The atmosphere in strip clubs, from my admittedly limited experience, has been downright sad and depressing.
 

PotatoeMan

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Hagi said:
The atmosphere in strip clubs, from my admittedly limited experience, has been downright sad and depressing.
I'm not saying your wrong but you admit that you have limited experience so you don't really know what you're talking about.
 

Hagi

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PotatoeMan said:
Hagi said:
The atmosphere in strip clubs, from my admittedly limited experience, has been downright sad and depressing.
I'm not saying your wrong but you admit that you have limited experience so you don't really know what you're talking about.
I know exactly what I'm talking about. I know that in my limited experience strip clubs are downright sad and depressing. I know that I doubt that there are many strip clubs which are as some games depict them.

Since everything I talked about was either my personal experience, my personal doubts or my personal opinion I daresay that nobody knows better than I what I talked about.
 

Frankster

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Hagi said:
Well clearly some men do have secret desires that are repressed irl or this article wouldnt have been written, but yeh not all men for men are not a hive mind any more then women are.

As for rl strip club atmosphere and how faithful games depict them, well from my..wilder days, it depends. Been to some classy places where due to whatever factors (good security? good pay?) the girls really were enthusiastic and quite into their dancing, but this was at classy expensive places well located.
On the flip side been to some seedy places with that characteristic depressive atmosphere where the girls practically had a pleading look in their eyes as they scanned the room for tips from a crowd that wasnt paying much.
Oh and fun part: twas female friends who got me into that scene and going to those places.

Either way ive yet to play any game that recreates either the positive or negative atmosphere of these places, heck i didnt even consider mass effect to have strip clubs until clicking on this article as for me they were just clubs with blue dancers, hardly what youd call a strip club if they aint stripping, ive seen more erotic dancing and skin displayed at music festivals.
 

grigjd3

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Hagi said:
That's the plot... The entire premise... It's what the entire game is about...
I am aware of that - in fact, that's my point. What I am saying is that the whole premise of the game is silly. I enjoyed the game (up until the last third of the third installment), but the whole premise of the game is still silly. Going after the inclusion of strip clubs into a game whose premise is that life ends in X days unless this one guy defeats them is like complaining that your coffee maker isn't working in the middle of a category five hurricane. There is a wall of ridiculous heading your way and you are complaining about some trivial silliness.
 

soh45400

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From a technical viewpoint, I always thought they are there to show off the graphics ,particularly changing lightning and crowds the developers have made and maybe have an excuse to have loud music playing in a fast paced, close quarters fight scene.
Notice that in shooters in such levels, it starts off with everyone being clam, then gun shots, then the whole crowd disperses, lights are blinking and enemies start shooting from behind chest-high walls.
The exact same levels are copied in Max Payne 3, Black Ops 2, Kane and Lynch 1(the best version of that level because then you go back in and the enemies use lightning conditions to hide more) and probably others that I can't remember.
 

Hagi

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grigjd3 said:
Hagi said:
That's the plot... The entire premise... It's what the entire game is about...
I am aware of that - in fact, that's my point. What I am saying is that the whole premise of the game is silly. I enjoyed the game (up until the last third of the third installment), but the whole premise of the game is still silly. Going after the inclusion of strip clubs into a game whose premise is that life ends in X days unless this one guy defeats them is like complaining that your coffee maker isn't working in the middle of a category five hurricane. There is a wall of ridiculous heading your way and you are complaining about some trivial silliness.
To take your coffee maker analogy, if there's reason to rationally believe that your coffee maker should be working under those conditions, because you're a caffeine addict and you've hooked up your coffee machine to independent and hurricane-resistant power- and water-sources, then it's a completely valid complaint, no matter the silliness of hooking your coffee machine up to such devices. Your coffee maker should not act that way.

Likewise, given that all life ends in X days unless Shepard defeats them, it's a valid complaint if he's visiting strip clubs or doing other meaningless side-quests, regardless of the possible silliness of that premise. One does not exclude or invalidate the other. Shepard should not act that way.