NoeL said:
Only if you cherry pick the extremists. I could do the same and point to all the trolls threatening rape as a response to feminist critique, but that doesn't help either side. From what I've seen, the only hostility coming from reasonable progressives are towards ignorant and hateful opinions (and no, that's not a no true Scotsman fallacy since we can assess whether someone is acting reasonably or not).
It's not equivalent because rape threats don't form an integral part of an anti-feminist or pro-MRA argument; rape threats are an irrelevant and offensive digression calculated to derail the conversation. The accusation that a resistance to progressive inclusivity must stem from a position of fear or hatred
is part of the "party line" (homo
phobia, racism as fear of the outsider, misogyny as mother-issues or sexual frustration, etc) - the very fact that people would see fit to label their opponents as racist/sexist/phobic reveals the thought process going on:
"your argument isn't legitimate because you're not as intelligent or morally correct as I am" - and that immediately scuppers the hope of an honest dialogue. Whether the progressives choose to parse this as racist/sexist/phobic or use more base insults of the fedora/neckbeard/virgin variety, the same basic mechanism is happening: they're making a value judgment about the legitimacy of a viewpoint and using
that as the core of their attack. So, yeah, that's why it's precisely a No True Scotsman a lot of the time.
NoeL said:
We decide whether a game is racist/sexist/homophobic by discussing the issues. Note, with things like ACU or Brink before it nobody is accusing the devs of being sexist for excluding playable female characters, they're just arguing the devs are being exclusionary by not having the option (as there are some people that won't be interested in playing multiplayer as a guy). It wouldn't have been a big deal if it wasn't for the weak excuse given in response which essentially boiled down to "We don't consider you worthy", and if they stuck with the truth (that the multiplayer characters are just representations of the single player protagonist, like Metroid Prime 2) there wouldn't have been nearly as much hubbub.
True, Ubisoft handled it
really badly, but it's suspicious that people would jump to the worst possible conclusion in the first place; much like they were lining up to call Far Cry 4 "racist" based on nothing more than a (mis)interpretation of the cover art. That's the kind of knee-jerk bullshit I'd like to see less of.
NoeL said:
You mum, your grandparents, Aunt Sally, etc.
I thought we were talking about people who purchase and play games?
NoeL said:
Games that are designed for/marketed to white, adolescent males. Of course black, middle-aged women can play and enjoy them too, but that's beside the point.
You're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that ONLY white, adolescent males can/do play and enjoy mainstream AAA games, I'm saying those games are made for and sold to primarily white, adolescent males. The first question they ask is "Does this appeal to white, adolescent males?" And this is true for practically every Western-developed AAA game (and Japanese developers ask "Does this appeal to Japanese, adolescent males?"). The only other market that sees any kind of public visibility is the kids market.
Perhaps this is a minor distinction but I feel it's an important one: mainstream games aren't tailored to white males
because they hold the somehow important qualities of being white and male, they're aimed at white males because they happen to be the mainstream (most people in the Western world are white, males are still typically the breadwinners, more males play games than females, etc). Implying that white hetero males are pandered to in some kind of meaningful way by the cover-all-bases, lowest-common-denominator school of content creation is misleading and I feel has the potential to bias the conversation. We wouldn't call Transformers "a film for white males", would we? We'd call it a piece of mainstream popular cinema. Perhaps the two descriptions are as good as synonymous, but why bring sex and race into the equation gratuitously? A black male isn't going to by default
not enjoy it; it's not
excluding anyone.
And yeah, at the risk of labouring the point, I think it's an important distinction. Women and minorities complain that games don't include enough well-written female or black characters? Welcome to my world! There aren't many well-written, fleshed-out white hetero male characters in games either! Us white males aren't enjoying the videogaming equivalent of Shakespeare behind closed doors while everybody else suffers; depictions of game characters are pretty crap across the board. The fact that Doom Guy or Football Dude or Faceless Racing Man are white males doesn't enhance my gameplay; they're surface details of the most superficial, meaningless type.
NoeL said:
That's a gross misunderstanding of the progressive position. In most cases people aren't saying "Stop doing this thing that other people want", they're saying "Stop doing this needlessly discouraging thing that you're only doing because you've done it in the past and are too lazy to address it." I highly doubt there's a significant number of players that are like "I thought the game was ok, but I would have preferred it if 'Girl Character' had less agency and was more of a trophy for me to win."
Feel free to clarify what the progressive position is, but from what I see, it seems to be a demand that an established industry come together and perform an unprecedented act of collaboration in risking millions of dollars to create games that include elements that are untested and aren't considered to appeal to the bulk of mainstream consumers. The idea that this change could be a gradual process or that progressives could provide proof-of-concept through some indie hits before the AAA-market jumps on board is also regularly rejected as being too little, too late.
NoeL said:
Another guy in the thread brought up Korra, and how he wonders if it's the show the writers initially envisioned or if they made so many characters female just for the sake of being progressive. And we may wonder that, seeing as we're right in the middle of experiencing this shift away from predominantly male-centric media, but the kids aren't wondering that. It only seems weird now because it's different, but that won't be the case for younger generations. We can set better examples.
I have no idea what Korra is but I'm guessing it's an example of something that breaks the traditional mold of majority characters? OK, great! I'm all in favour of more people taking risks and diversifying the medium, especially if that's what the consumers want. But it has to be a voluntary process. The idea that people feel they can strong-arm the industry into a new direction if they lobby hard enough and shout loud enough is obnoxious.
