Like Gamers being offended at someone pointing out that their favorite game might have some serious problematic implications?LAGG said:
How can "gamers" and "social justice warriors" get along?
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Actually she went to the papers to complain about it, and others marched on her behalf and argued. And if there were internet message boards they would have also been utilized too. Also, by and large I don't buy games that don't interest me, I don't buy call of duty, and remember me was interesting and had I not been flat broke when it came out I probably would have bought it. (as it is I can only buy games during a steam summer sale, and even then only if my finances aren't hit with emergencies). I also never said anything about specific game companies appeasing me, you seem to like building strawmen from what I say.ultreos2 said:
My point was that *gasp* maybe we need to look at the underlying views in the arguments made. I also never claimed to be part of a massive group, and I find it interesting that you ignored pretty much all of my points. The point that I brought up was that it seemed like the people here on your side of the argument were saying that any nonwhite main character had to have their existence justified. THAT was the point of my argument, and that if you were going to say that it wasn't a big deal that there is a rather extreme dearth of minority and female characters that there were other situations that might be seen as analagous. The affection one matters to, I have no problem seeing gay or straight couples out together in public or showing affection to each other, but I have seen people that do, i have heard them harass them and I have told them off for it but such people do exist. I'm also not claiming that I'm some great person or anything else, I'm another schlub sharing my opinion.
If you want me to prove it, ok, then explain why it doesn't seem odd or abnormal for every default character to be a white straight male unless the game is an avatar style game? Explain why there has to be justification for a minority or female hero option let alone existing as a main character for there not to be cries and laments of PC overload or diversity for the sake of diversity. And yeah, Remember me didn't sell as well as it could have, but there are also a lot of COD clones and the like that fail too, we don't look at those and assume that COD is dying (no matter how much some of us may wish it were).
When people stop thinking of others as "gamers" or "SJWs" and recognize each other as fellow human beings with logically and sometimes illogically formed opinions that should be argued on each one's individual merit instead of as an abstract extremist dehumanizing collective.
When people stop making stupid prejudiced knee-jerk assumptions about "those darn SJWs/Gamers/Feminists/MRAs/Liberals/Conservatives/Foreigners/Rednecks/(Racial Group)/Christians/Muslims/Jews/Scary People Who Aren't Me" the world will be a better place.
When people stop making stupid prejudiced knee-jerk assumptions about "those darn SJWs/Gamers/Feminists/MRAs/Liberals/Conservatives/Foreigners/Rednecks/(Racial Group)/Christians/Muslims/Jews/Scary People Who Aren't Me" the world will be a better place.
I consider myself a gamer and don't relate to what you're talking about.TemplarofSteel said:
Every single thing in the world "might have some serious problematic implications" if you ask the right people, depending on what they consider "problematic" and "serious". I grew up hearing that "games are for awkward nerds", "games are for kids", "games make people violent"... there's not outstanding to be seen here. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, there'll always be something.
If a person will care for everything everyone else thinks, that person will likely go crazy, because people think all kinds of weird stuff all over the world.
Anyway, fear of mass hysteria is still part of basic human nature, and also not completely devoid of reason. That's why zombies are so popular, and why films like The Mist in the scene where
everyone starts following the crazy lady
Who is anyone to say that the second body image is less valid than the first? Why do you get to decide what the default is? Why should it be the body of a twelve year old boy with a girl's head on it?The_Kodu said:
You know because you couldn't possibly set the boob size lower when you have a choice.
I rarely get to make my male characters into fat bastards. Should people make an similar image as above but of a fat bastard on one side and a gloriously chiseled ab machine on the other and complain that most avatars don't look like the former?
Yes, avatars are generally made to look attractive and/or dangerous. Same as why certain actors/actresses are hired to star in movies.
Personally, I just try to ignore them. I'm not always successful, because of the sheer stupidity I see the "social justice" people spouting, but for the most part I flat out ignore them. I think alot of this started when people started referring to games as "an art form". Cue me rolling my eyes. I play games for relaxation, enjoyment, and escapism from the regular world. I cant stand movies OR games that try to make a political statement, and when they do, I avoid them if at all possible, and wish for their abject failure. They have no place in my world of gaming, and I feel reasonably sure that there are ALOT of other gamers out there that feel the same way.Burnouts3s3 said:
Agreed, and they definitely do it with males, as well. Anyway, speaking of having a chance to play a fat bastard, if you havent played it already, might I recommend Gotham City Imposters? Its a hoot to play, and you can make some pretty hilarious characters as well.Lightknight said:Who is anyone to say that the second body image is less valid than the first? Why do you get to decide what the default is? Why should it be the body of a twelve year old boy with a girl's head on it?The_Kodu said:
You know because you couldn't possibly set the boob size lower when you have a choice.
I rarely get to make my male characters into fat bastards. Should people make an similar image as above but of a fat bastard on one side and a gloriously chiseled ab machine on the other and complain that most avatars don't look like the former?
Yes, avatars are generally made to look attractive and/or dangerous. Same as why certain actors/actresses are hired to star in movies.
Well, the fat guy example was more for an obvious male example but I that is a great recommendation if you want unusual body types. Sometimes I just think it'd be fun to play as a crazily fat dude, you know? Like 500lbs plus but running around brandishing a sword in Skyrim or whatever. They're beginning to have sliding scales of weight in games but usually it just gets up to chunky and nowhere close to fluffy, "daaaaamn" or "Oh, Hell no" sizes. (Gabriel Iglesias on the Sixth Level of Fat [http://www.cc.com/video-clips/32b85n/stand-up-gabriel-iglesias--the-sixth-level-of-fat])Riff Moonraker said:
But mostly I want to play as that chiseled ab-infested bad ass that looks like he could cut you with his stubble.
Glad you didn't read my pronouns as YOU as in The Kodu. Reading back over my post it suddenly occurs to me that it wasn't necessarily a given that I was using the "Royal You" there and not demanding why you specifically have a right to define the legitimate body types.The_Kodu said:
I find it interesting that I see real world examples all the time that are practically posters of the game characters that the SJW crowd complains about all the time. Girls that jog in booty shorts and sports bras only in public areas and people who dress in spandex all the time.
It occurred to me sometime to ask the question, "Why are these girls and their body types less legitimate that body types we see the SJW people arguing for?" It's around that point that I stopped worrying about body types or even personalities in games because for the most part, there are always people that are really like that in real life. Even if there weren't, we're talking about someone making visual art the way they want to.
Didnt "the most dangerous women in gaming" just claimed in her most recent video that things that happen in video games do infact have a real lasting effect on the person who is playing said games?Vault101 said:
So if the video game is mysoginistic... you will become mysoginistic yourselfe.. the game influences you to be so.
If the game is violent... you will automatically become violent... the game influences you to be so.
Oh wait no.. the second one was proclaimed by a lawyer and not a "feminist" internet pop culture critic so it doesnt count.
And this is why i have a big problem with people like bob and jim supporting people like her so unquestionably.
On one hand they keep decrying people like jack thompson as morons that just want to make a quick buck and have no real base for their arguments...
While on the other they keep telling us what horrible people we are for not buying into the crap Sarkesian and the like want to push.
She sits infront of a camera and tells us why we are bad people for liking mario games because they "objectivy" princes peach. And if you claim that she didnt claimed that we are bad people for liking these games then why did her last video told us that mysoginistic games = mysoginistic people make?
However: She doesnt interview women that work in the industry and maybe had personal experiences of sexist encounters with co workers and managment. She doesnt interview companies and try to find out why thy have a problem with female main characters, why there isnt more diversity. My guess is the answer would be pretty boring: Sales numbers.
But remember... "most dangerous women in gaming" right mr Chipman?
Thought no one of "prominence" in game journalism ever speaks about this.. instead we get to listen to jim chastisizing us for being so toxic and hostile and that we as a "community" (remember gamers have developed a hivemind) need to stop doing these things. (remember that female bioware employee that left bioware and everyone claimed that it was because of deaththreads, only later to be found out that it had nothing to do with those deaththreads? Yeah we still got yelled at by jim for it in one of his videos even thought i doubt any of his regular audience belonged in the category of people that make such comments)
Only for in another video telling us to keep whining to big publishers cause whining (aka loud vocal backlash to their shenanigans) aparantly is the only thing that can make them change their ways.
What now? Less toxicity? More toxicity? Only against certain "sanctioned" targets?
Its this double morale, this hypocrisy that really grinds my gears, especialy since most often i do agree with these people on most problems the industry has and just dont understand when they turn around to point fingers at their own audience.
As for the SJWs themselves... what happens on tumblr shows up either on youtube/imgur/4chan and i say let it stay there. Nothing ever good comes from drama created by people hungry for attention.
as much as we forget we don't live in a bubble...its not JUST games, theres the argument pop culture influences us in many ways...an old popular article http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women_p2.htmlKaradalis said:
we live in a rather male centric society and our entertainment reflects that, if there is merit in the idea when we shouldn't ignore it just because it makes us uncomfortable
which is relevant to....oh yeah...nothingultreos2 said:
its relevant to nothing
[quote/]You know what bothers me about this world, this day and age? Women aren't allowed to be sexy.
[/quote]
except the idea in that picture is that THEY are decided for "her" what is and isn't "sexy" she isn't allowed to be herself
Products will follow the money. Action flicks largely have males in it and ultra sexy females because men are usually the ones buying tickets to them. Same with AAA games.Vault101 said:
We know that there are differences in genre preference between sexes in nearly every form of media. It would be naive to assume this isn't the case in gaming as well. The problem is that non-action games typically aren't the huge money makers and are often more difficult to make than just slapping together a fighting mechanic and having you overcome enemies.
But if you think female characters aren't main characters 50% of the time just because "men hate women" shenanigans, you're wrong. They're not main characters most of the time because they're not even close to being the vast majority of the AAA gaming demographics. Last study we had that distinguished console ownership by sex we saw 80% of female console gamers owning a Wii which automatically excluded them from most of the AAA market. However, you'll notice that Nintendo has been making huge strides to make female friendly games. That ESA study includes everything from iOS to any grandmother who once watched a person playing solitaire out of the corner of her eye. It's not the actual AAA target market.
These are businesses and they follow the consumer, not vice versa. There's a reason why the female developer (forget her name) recommended an ability to skip action scenes like people skip cut scenes. People scoffed at her but she was right, if there is a bias against action games in the female demographic then having the ability to make well written games more like movies than action games could really improve the market. And it was just the ABILITY to skip, which wouldn't have even impacting all the people doing to the scoffing.
That being said, where possible, there should always be a female alternative and any other number of people that would be reasonable to add. If not a full character cust utility.
I can't say anything about Bob, but I'm fairly certain Jim Sterling has said in one of his videos that he finds Anita's videos at best boring and obvious and at worst incorrect. Not once did he openly praise her as some sort of top tier feminist gamer.Karadalis said:
In fact I specifically remembered him stating that Anita started off as yet another person on their corner of the internet enjoying her echo chamber with nobody giving a shit about her. Yet her dissenters couldn't shut up about her for more than 5 seconds that she went from Youtube nobody to Youtube celebrity.
Exactly. If there were money in it the same way there's money in the male dominated market then companies would flock to it.s69-5 said:
Companies love money like a fat kid loves cake. And boy do I like cake.
If ever a romance novel equivalent is found then you can bet it'll be released in droves.
I say this knowing full well that my wife loves FPS games like COD and is in the minority there. There will always be people outside the statistical norms. For the 80% of girls that owned the wii as their primary console, there was still 20% of girls that owned a PS3 or 360.
Re: the OP, avoiding the use of semi-pejorative terms like "social justice warriors" would be a decent start.
SJWs don't get along with anyone. It's not that "gamers" are uniquely disagreeable and that they just can't get along with SJWs, or something; it's that SJWs practically define themselves by finding "problematic" things everywhere, which makes them a grating bunch to associate with. Authentic social justice causes, like trying to avert real-world poverty, are often left by the wayside so that obnoxious Tumblrinas can wax poetic about how someone wearing a bindi is "cultural appropriation" and deserving of the death penalty. The problem is really pretty simple: the vast majority of SJW arguments are intellectually bankrupt. Nobody (gamer, or otherwise) is going to get along with them until they stop spouting absurdities (e.g. that racism has been redefined to only ever refer to institutional racism) and start opening themselves up to civil discourse. That hasn't happened, and if it ever does happen, it'll come at the expense of a lot of popular SJW positions of the moment, since many of them are indefensible.
Oh look, a differently worded Starving kids in X fallacy.Michael Kirley said:
And tell me Michael Kirly- what have you yourself done for the poor souls in third world countries as opposed to whining about tumblr blogs on the internet?
I've seen this argument before and your completely misrepresent it. They never advocated for the death penalty. They pointed out the issue that when women of Islam wear Bindis, Hijabs, and other such garments they are considered oppressed and lacking free will. However when someone like say- Taylor Swift does it, it's considered hip, cool and edgy.
Perhaps they get annoyed because people like you go out of your way to misrepresent and exaggerate what they say?
Nice ad hominem you got there.
Like what exactly? Also "SJW" are not an exclusively group. Believe it or not, just like one can be a Sports fan and a literature enthusiast, one can be an "SJW" and any other self identifying group.
Oh, and the first step to getting along with someone is to not insult them right out of the gate and make hyperbolic statements about things they talk about.
I've seen this and that's not true either. I don't think they ever said racism is only racism if it's institutionalized. They have stated that certain negative stereotypes about different ethnic groups have been institutionalized.
People tend to not open up to any civil conversation when the person in queston comes right out of the gate to claim that "SJW"s are "intellectually bankrupt."
And how are you certain that most of their positions will crumble? You yourself in this very post have already misrepresented a good deal of their arguments into things they never actually said.
Not at all. SJWs hijack the cause of social justice to pontificate about things that have nothing to do with real struggles. They piggyback off of legitimate movements to make themselves relevant.Dragonbums said:
You've misunderstood my argument.
I've seen this argument before and your completely misrepresent it. They never advocated for the death penalty. They pointed out the issue that when women of Islam wear Bindis, Hijabs, and other such garments they are considered oppressed and lacking free will. However when someone like say- Taylor Swift does it, it's considered hip, cool and edgy.[/quote]
Except this is not what they argue at all. First off, wearing Bindis or Kimonos isn't perceived by the majority of Western culture as being indicative of a lack of free will, and yet SJWs on numerous blogs claim that someone who isn't, say, Japanese, shouldn't be wearing a kimono.
Get off your high horse. I've debated with tonnes of SJWs. Everything I've said so far has come almost verbatim out of the mouth of multiple Tumblrinas that I've talked to in the past.
That's not an ad hominem in the slightest. An attack on an argument isn't an attack on character.
I posted a non-exhaustive list of things that I think are ridiculous and which SJWs are wont to say. You can read it here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.855605-Reclaiming-SJW?page=3#21190947
Except I'm not doing that. You're not the first person I've encountered who's sympathetic to SJWs.
Wrong. The "racism = power + prejudice" equation is ubiquitous on SJW Tumblrs.
Not coming "right out of the gate." We're discussing SJWs as a category; obviously I'm going to generalize based on the ones I've encountered. The ones I've encountered have been almost entirely poor people to discuss with.
Lol. Do you really want to go down this road? You actually want to deny that SJWs say these things? I think you're the one unfamiliar with the cesspool that is Tumblr.
What constitutes as a real struggle depends on person to person. So let me ask you again, what have you done for impoverished kids around the globe besides complaining about teens on tumblr? Because this argument ONLY pops up when the poster in question tries to lessen the problem of another. It's the most dishonest tactic of them all. Because the reality is you give no shits about impoverished kids as the people your complaining about.Michael Kirley said:
Not at all. I've seen this plenty of times. Person A complains about something. Person B thinks Person's A's argument is stupid. Person B states there are greater for Person A to complain about regardless of it's personal relevance to Person A's. This is despite the fact that Person B also doesn't care too much about the problem they bring up, but do so to simply 1-Up Person's A's complaints in an attempt to label it as irrelevant.
Except that's what they are arguing about. Like I've said, I've seen the post myself on my dashboard. I haven't seen anywhere near what you've claimed. I browse tumblr a fucking lot dude.
Unless, of course, your went to like the most insane blogs on the planet and claim that this nutty nobody is the face of an entire argument.
Are you really going to claim this? Especially when Islamic and Hindu people themselves have said this very thing?
How did we jump from Hijabs to Komonos? Also what if the person claiming this is Japanese themselves? There are definitely people of other cultures who take their religions seriously. I'm not going to act like a Japanese expert, but perhaps there is something about the Kimono that other people are doing wrong? I don't know. Either way I personally think cultural appropriation is a bit too extreme. But it also helps to at least understand the history of the garment your wearing.
I'm sure you have. That's why you use ad hominem insults like "intellectually bankrupt". Sorry if I'm not going to take you seriously when you start out your posts with stuff like that.
Yet you've claimed all SJW's are intellectually bankrupt. With your only claim being "I argued with some people on Tumblr", and since you lump all SJW's into one humongous hivemind it might as well be a judgement of their character.
And this goes right back into your thinking SJW's are a hive mind. Shame really because the majority of the page was having a pretty calm discussion.
Do you honestly believe all SJW's believe universally half the stuff in that list?
I mean, really now. That's like going on the Escapist right now, finding a couple of people who advocate for Nintendo to go third party, and making the claim that "Gamers" want Nintendo to go third party. Ignoring the fact that just as many people within the gamer community are against that.
Also some of these things you listed (like skewed statistics.) can easily be applied to other groups with their fair share of insane. Out of that whole list, a good chunk of them are easily ignorable, or are regulated to such a small minority that most people don't give a shit.
And I certainly won't be the last.
When you use pretty extreme terms like intellectually bankrupt to describe an entire group of people then that reads off as a pretty extreme statement. That's not going to get you brownie points in any debate between said people.
Is it? Because as a tumblr users, I just told you the opposite.
Then perhaps you should find better people to discuss this with instead of continuously looking for tempermental crybabies on tumblr and using them as representative of an entire group.
Yeah. I do. Because with things like this it's always the same. Cherry picked, temperamental nut cases that make up maybe 5% of the group, brought up to the forefront and used as the face of an entire movement.
It's like claiming all MOBA players are pimple faced, basement dwelling losers because out of the whole group, 5 of them made an ass of themselves on a grand public scale.
It's like Anita with gaming feminism. The people who hated her, and feminists in gaming period took this women from being a zero to a star and now user her as a scapegoat for why feminism in gaming is bad.
Uh I can only get along with people who treat me with the basic courtesy befitting a human being, no matter what they are. And then I don't have the time to get along with everyone...
So I just play the games I like, don't give a fuck about that tumblr of 4chan have to say about those games, and spend my time with a select inner circle of people who have earned my trust and affections.
So I just play the games I like, don't give a fuck about that tumblr of 4chan have to say about those games, and spend my time with a select inner circle of people who have earned my trust and affections.