If You Are Going to Hate on a Game Company, Do It For the Right Reasons

[AntiChrist]

I think the broader explanation is that less women are game designers for the same reason that less men are fashion editors: they are less likely to consider it an option because of societal gender roles. Which are ingrained into us from birth because of instincts we have retained from our evolutionary history that we may no longer require.

I'm a little confused here. Do women not consider game development a thing they might want to try out because of societal gender roles - i.e. a behaviour and way of thinking internalized from society at large? Or is there a primordial instinct at play? Those two points don't really mix, I think. Am I reading the "ingrained from birth"-part too literally? Is the point instead, that today's socialized gender roles have their origin in biological impulses felt thousands of years ago which may or may not make them - the gender roles that is - obsolete? Or is it the biological instincts - still felt today - that may or may not be obsolete?

 

[Zombie Badger]

Bashing on Tomodachi Life wasn't legitimate to begin with.

Here's an inconvenient truth - gay marriage is not legal in Japan. Do you really think Nintendo was going to depict *illegal* activities in their game that was rated E for Everyone? Your problem isn't with Nintendo - it's with Japanese culture. Get that changed first, then you can rail on Nintendo.

Zelda games (all but two of which have E ratings) fully endorse destruction of property and theft of other people's money.

 

[fight me in space]

Sadly, a lot of gamers won't compromise on this, and their insistence on only buying the best AAA games they see marketed past the point of saturation keeps this from happening. Sorry Remember Me, I know you fought for us, but you didn't score high enough so it's not my fault I'm not buying you. Sorry Drakengard 3, I'm too busy looking up cat videos to even know you exist. Tales of Xillia, aaargh, anime, it burns. It isn't that companies don't want to take risks, but we aren't giving them a market that says the risk we want them to take is a smart one.

If I sound bitter, it's cause I am. All this talk about more variety from people that seem to only want it in the one area. Genre, setting, art style, game mechanics, all things that would offer more variety than the group of pixels/polygons that make up the main character. People jumped at the thought of Link being female, but to me, it was a purely cosmetic thing that would leave us at the same fetch quest with the same sword fighting, the same item hunting, the same puzzles, and power ups, etc.

This is a recurring trend in any topic involving representation in any media. It's not enough that there are comics with majority black casts, we need a black Batman. It doesn't matter that there are plenty of action movies with female protagonists, we need a female James Bond. It doesn't matter that [indie game] has a female protagonist, we need a female protagonist in [AAA game].

These people don't give a shit about being represented, they just want a big game they can plant their flag on and shout "Nigga we made it!".

 

[Sticky]

Yes, I'm sure the reason your analogy fell flat wasn't because you were, and still are, comparing real-life oppression and racism to a video game that a company released for profit in the year 2014.

Oh I'm sorry, I thought you were just farting.

Oh, sick burn. Do you get it? I farted, over the internet, and this somehow was visible to you. I'm so glad this added to our conversation and wasn't a "no u" level personal insult that I would expect from a ten year old.

The reason that the comparisons I made were invalid is why?

Please elaborate, big boy. Show us your immense genius, studmuffin.

238U

Talking seriously now, the reason none of your arguments work is because you're not only making such pitched comparisons that have no relation to one another, but also because you're trying to find a thread of racism that extends back as you pour and over-analyze these games for reasons to hate them.

And you're overthinking them, Tomodachi life is a shovelware game about playing with Miis. It doesn't have gay marriage, not because the people developing it are hateful Japanese bigots like you laughably suggest, but because it's a little Miiware game that a small team probably made in a few months and they didn't think to include gay marriage in.

What I find funny about your no-tolerance policy is how your argument immediately jumped to 'People need to stop forgiving Japan for being bigots' when you didn't even bother looking at the other side of the issue: it's a shovelware game like hundreds of shovelware games before it that didn't have much thought put into the mechanics and was otherwise made as a cheap dollar for the ten or so people in the world who actually care about Miis. In fact, the person who seems to have brought 'Lol poor ignorant, racist Japan' into the equation seems to be you, not Yahtzee who was discussing the feasibility of it, or the initial discussion that was based around the argument of the bug that was found in the game.

Yet, here you are, railing against this one particular game. Let's be realistic, you're really only doing it because it's made by Nintendo, and therefore fits perfectly within your talking points of the industry being evil and oppressive and not actually because you care.

Same of Farcry 4, and Assassin's Creed. The first thing I heard about Farcry 4 was that there was a white guy on the box. Not actually how it played, or what it was about, or what the guy on the box's role in the story even was. Just that, Oh no! There's a White guy! There's an oppressed maybe-white-can't-tell guy! Not another White male in a video game!

When the reality is: Racism didn't exist in the equation of this video game until the internet came along, started analyzing skin colors, and started crying 'racism'. This is why no one takes your argument seriously: at the end of the day, this is all imagination, and if the first thing you jump to is the suffering of others when thinking about video games, then it seems like the problem exists with you. Maybe if you want to forgive the past, you can start with yourself instead of immediately assuming the worst of people and assuming that you, personally, are the good guy in your story.

tickyS

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

[I'm a little confused here. Do women not consider game development a thing they might want to try out because of societal gender roles - i.e. a behaviour and way of thinking internalized from society at large? Or is there a primordial instinct at play?

Actually while the gender ratio in development is far from equal, female participation in development is significant. (I think about 30% but I'm too lazy to look it up right now). Certainly much better than NASA during the moon shots (about 5%).

But women are not typically being put into positions where they have governing influence on gender roles in AAA games. We see some exceptions in the indie sector, and we're seeing there at least more awareness of the gender stereotypes (e.g. The selectable damsel in Spelunky can be male, female or canine). And we can't ignore those games that do have full featured customization of their characters, such as the Saints Row and Elder Scrolls franchises.

I really think that the reason we see so many white male protagonists in AAA games is not because the decision-makers dislike women, but are extremely risk-adverse, and thus don't want to vary the formula from prior games too much, ergo (for example) a GTA game with multiple characters before we have a GTA game with a female character. The problem is that developers have to worry more about covering their own butts than making a relatable game.

It is why, comparably, we got the movie Battleship based on the Milton Bradley game. A known franchise, even one that doesn't translate well into movie form, is easier to justify than attempting to make a good navy movie.

And then this extreme internal conservatism is left to the PR folks to spin, which they do poorly.

238U

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I personally take the view that the over-representation of male game protagonists stems from an over-representation of male creators in the triple-A industry. And while one could certainly find individual cases of misogyny in action, I think the broader explanation is that less women are game designers for the same reason that less men are fashion editors: they are less likely to consider it an option because of societal gender roles. Which are ingrained into us from birth because of instincts we have retained from our evolutionary history that we may no longer require.

I made this, and many other of the points in this column in a thread on this site not long ago [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.852858.21097545] and got challenged and called out for it.

Frankly, I don't care much about the endless debate. I loathe feminism, I believe firmly in equality and have no issue with playing the role myriad protagonists be they male, female, white, black, red indian, elf, alien, mammal or whatever. But I don't think blaming the industry for everything is right either. If there is ever to be more women in the industry, more girls need to pursue that academic and career path.

As for the games, I won't be buying Unity. Not because it is or isn't sexist, but beause it's a bland rehash of the same game released year on year that's tedious as hell. I didn't play Tomb Raider reboot (tho I own it), not because it stars a woman, but because it's a game consisting almost entirely of QTEs. I don't buy CoD or any MMSs because they're done to death, thoroughly uninteresting and I don't buy the same game year on year. I loathe the practice of corporate IP milking with annual re-releases that write-off prior installments and keep the cash machine dispensing. Re-release game, sell DLCs for a year, abanadon, repeat. F**k. That.

I thought Watch Dogs was about mediocre, no more than 5-7 out of 10. Dull, shitty driving, crappy story, homogenised gameplay copy/pasted straight out of other Ubi IPs. I think these games sucked, not because of lack of diversity but because they were mass-market, blockbuster garbage. Entertainment products to please the masses, marketed and hyped disproportionate to their actual quality.

And frankly, if games starring elderly, disabled, black, female war veterans would sell better than generic white dude, we could be certain that they would be getting made. The industry makes what sells, not what we say we want. If games with female protagonists were sure-fire winners that outsold games starring a male, we'd be moaning that there's too many generic, female protagonists and not enough men.

 

[pspman45]

I was originally confused by the Assassins Creed thing, because they usually have female models for multiplayer, but then I found out it's because the coop characters are supposed to be the same guy. Who thought that was a good idea at all is simply beyond me, but know I know it wasn't just them being lazy, ect.

 

[Sticky]

[I'm a little confused here. Do women not consider game development a thing they might want to try out because of societal gender roles - i.e. a behaviour and way of thinking internalized from society at large? Or is there a primordial instinct at play?

Actually while the gender ratio in development is far from equal, female participation in development is significant. (I think about 30% but I'm too lazy to look it up right now). Certainly much better than NASA during the moon shots (about 5%).

You're thinking game playing, in which female players, as a whole, make up almost 45%.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf

Game development has staggeringly low female participation rates.

http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=10567

Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the wage gap, but the fact of the matter is that it's plainly obvious why more women aren't in auteur roles in video games: because statistically, there aren't many to begin with.

EDIT: Something else to remember: the wage gap category in that image doesn't take into consideration years of experience, it's a straight average of the total participants in the survey. Which would be important if we want to get into the discussion on why the gap exists.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

No, I'm going to hate on Ubisoft for sheer laziness. AC: Brotherhood had a diverse range of characters in multiplayer, and I'm not just talking gender, I mean size and shape. You had big people, skinny people, a range in the middle--you know, like how people are in real life. Unity's four MP protagonists are all the exact same guy. Same height, same build, same stance, same gait. Other than some bits of clothing and small variation in the chin and facial hair, they're identical.

So this is what the steeplechase pursuit of higher graphical fidelity has led to: devs are effectively palette-swapping player characters like they're sprites from the 8-bit era.

I'm going to go ahead and mention there's a difference between narrative co-op characters and derpy multiplayer characters.

Some kinda need characters. OF COURSE, Ubisoft did that well already with Conviction and Black List, but whatever, what do I know?

 

[Sticky]

No, I'm going to hate on Ubisoft for sheer laziness. AC: Brotherhood had a diverse range of characters in multiplayer, and I'm not just talking gender, I mean size and shape. You had big people, skinny people, a range in the middle--you know, like how people are in real life. Unity's four MP protagonists are all the exact same guy. Same height, same build, same stance, same gait. Other than some bits of clothing and small variation in the chin and facial hair, they're identical.

So this is what the steeplechase pursuit of higher graphical fidelity has led to: devs are effectively palette-swapping player characters like they're sprites from the 8-bit era.

I'm going to go ahead and mention there's a difference between narrative co-op characters and derpy multiplayer characters.

Some kinda need characters. OF COURSE, Ubisoft did that well already with Conviction and Black List, but whatever, what do I know?

I would buy that argument if it wasn't for the fact that Ubisoft has made unique assassins in the past that all co-existed in the same era.

Right now it's just four guys who all have Ezio's movesets (seriously Ubisoft, did you think no one would notice that they all most just like him?)

The worst part about it is that in the glorious age of 3D, they could have taken 3 people, all dressed and shaped the same way, and given them COMPLETELY different animations and made them their own characters without having to change who they were.
Maybe it would have resulted in them having to actually spend money on their fucking games, who knows. What I do know is that won't stop people from defending their laziness with 'but it's only a beta! they can fix it.. honest..'.

To me, I will never be able to think of an Ubisoft product at E3 again without also thinking 'I wonder what features they're going to cut from the final product?'

 

[AntiChrist]

- snip -

Hi Uriel-238:

That's a really good summary of the issue you've made there, I think. The statistics on females working in game development notwithstanding, since I'm in no position to judge that.

The part you quoted me on however, concerns Yahtzee's point about gender roles, which left me slightly puzzled. I was trying to find clarity with regards to what those sentences meant and how they fitted together. Did you seek to quote the other paragraph?

 

[gridsleep]

Larry Croft? Lawrence of Acroftia? Might work, if you give him gorgeous blue eyes to swim in. Uh...uhoh. Excuse me. Is this thing on?

Oh, now I know why Australia. Bigger desert easier to dig lots of shallow graves, than tiny murky, mucky old England.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I wonder if you see the irony of accusing me of this:

What I find funny about your no-tolerance policy is how your argument immediately jumped to People need to stop forgiving Japan for being bigots

And in the same sentence deciding this:

it's a shovelware game like hundreds of shovelware games before it that didn't have much thought put into...[whatever]

My point was that "forgiving Japan for being bigots" on the grounds that it's Japan is, itself, bigoted. It would be like saying we should forgive the US for hating black people because Americans are too dense to rise above our cultural prejudices. That's bullshit. Every nation has its prejudices, its racial and sexual biases and we should all strive for better. Including the US. Including Japan.

And so should those people who make shovelware. Even Ed Fucking Wood[footnote]May not be is actual full name[/footnote] took immense pride in the films he made. I'm pretty sure the devs of shovelware are looking to make something in the hopes that it isn't called shovelware on release. Even the folks who made Dungeon Keeper did it thinking they were making a playable, enjoyable game that wasn't designed to entrap whales. Most of the devs at least.

Just because we expect a particular behavior from a particular sector doesn't make that behavior right or tolerable. We see a lot of inexcusable behavior in the name of tradition or common practice or cultural bias. In the game industry, it's due to best practices, franchise conventions or expected features.[footnote]Guess the one from which we get QTEs.[/footnote] It's all bullshit, no matter what kind of polish you apply.

Now, yes, gay relationships in Tomodachi Life came about by accident (or through an exploit) but I'll address that in a later post so that you can fling poo at me about it separately, as is evidently your joy in life.

I hadn't discussed the other games on this forum because Tomodachi Life is the topic here. I'm sure you could predict that I have plenty to rant about regarding FC4 or AC:French Connection or whatever.

238U[footnote]We're starting a trend! Why doesn't everyone sign their posts this way?[/footnote]

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

The part you quoted me on however, concerns Yahtzee's point about gender roles, which left me slightly puzzled. I was trying to find clarity with regards to what those sentences meant and how they fitted together. Did you seek to quote the other paragraph?

Um...maybe?

This happens when I have multiple conversations at once.[footnote]...and too little coffee.[/footnote]

238U

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I loathe feminism, I believe firmly in equality...

It's odd seeing those statements together non-ironically. Most feminism is about equality, but like any other major social equality movement it features a wide range of sub-divisions in which opinions differ regarding either approach or intended outcome, or the rate at which change is instigated.

A good comparison would be the difference between Dr. King (who was an avid integrationist) and Malcom X (who was a staunch segregationist). They both had the same general ambitions, but very different approaches.

238U

 

[Sticky]

I wonder if you see the irony of accusing me of this:

You mean those two sentences you took out of context? Great.

My point was that "forgiving Japan for being bigots" on the grounds that it's Japan is, itself, bigoted. It would be like saying we should forgive the US for hating black people because Americans are too dense to rise above our cultural prejudices. That's bullshit. Every nation has its prejudices, its racial and sexual biases and we should all strive for better. Including the US. Including Japan.

So that your point is that you didn't actually have a point to anything you were talking about, and instead wanted to feel-good rant about how oppressive countries were way back when.

Which, again, has nothing to add or has any relation to this conversation about video games. In fact I'm still confused why you brought it up at all or what place it has in this discussion about video games.

And so should those people who make shovelware. Even Ed Fucking Wood took immense pride in the films he made. I'm pretty sure the devs of shovelware are looking to make something in the hopes that it isn't called shovelware on release. Even the folks who made Dungeon Keeper did it thinking they were making a playable, enjoyable game that wasn't designed to entrap whales. Most of the devs at least.

Just because we expect a particular behavior from a particular sector doesn't make that behavior right or tolerable. We see a lot of inexcusable behavior in the name of tradition or common practice or cultural bias. In the game industry, it's due to best practices, franchise conventions or expected features. It's all bullshit, no matter what kind of polish you apply.

You've gone from "They should feel bad about this" to "They should have strived for better". This is on the topic of a game made in a few months released in a limited market that would have come and gone if it weren't for this controversy (which has made it sell quite well, so complaining about it clearly hasn't worked). A game released in a sea of games that don't even have relationship options at all but I don't see you complaining about those either. Maybe you can at least understand the irony in that.

And also, do you genuinely believe that shovelware devs are not aware that they are making shovelware? That Imagine Party Babiez and Barbie Dreamhouse devs were not aware that they were making a hollow collection of minigames meant to capitalize on a trend? Maybe next time you can write them a memo informing them of that, since they seem to be so blissfully unaware.

Now, yes, gay relationships in Tomodachi Life came about by accident (or through an exploit) but I'll address that in a later post so that you can fling poo at me about it separately, as is evidently your joy in life.

This sentence alone pretty much explains why we're having this argument in the first place: I don't think you're being fair to the conversation at hand or even particularly well-informed about it. You seem definitely well-informed about everything not related in the least to this conversation and are more than willing to tell us about it.

But we're not discussing those things, so why bring them up?

tickyS

Also, I culled your footnotes. I find those really annoying as opposed to just using parentheses pairs to denote matters that are your own personal opinion.

 

[Olas]

I think in these two cases, the companies' statements are what garnered the controversy. Tomodachi Life had relationships between two men but Nintendo patched them out because they weren't "whimsical" enough. And Ubisoft made that stupid statement about how animating female characters was too much work. The moral of the story is that if you're not going to be inclusive, then you should keep your mouth shut.

Not true at all. Nintendo never "patched" it out - it was a bug in the first place that allowed it. It was never coded in. It was never in a released version of the game.

This misinformation still persists.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9198-Tomopology-Life

I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. There was male-male marriage, then Nintendo got rid of it. I am aware it was a bug, but that doesn't make their first statement about gay marriage any better.

For goodness sake, thy didn't patch it out because it wasn't "whimsical" the bug BROKE THE GAME. It made it so that you couldn't save your game, and also allowed males to get pregnant. If they had left the bug in it would have constituted a broken unplayable product which I think is worse than a less inclusive product.

The comments that you're falsely attributing to the patch were about the game as it was originally designed, which is fair to criticize, but stop bringing the damn bug into it. It's not indicative of anything except Nintendo's desire to not sell broken products.

 

[Signa]

Finally, a level-headed assessment of the issue at hand, and no knee-jerking.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I loathe feminism, I believe firmly in equality...

It's odd seeing those statements together non-ironically. Most feminism is about equality, but like any other major social equality movement it features a wide range of sub-divisions in which opinions differ regarding either approach or intended outcome, or the rate at which change is instigated.

Well I disagree about the movement being about equality. I firmly believe that the entire movement is fundamentally *not* about equality at all but about promoting the rights, views and opinions of 50% of our population over and above those of the other 50%. It's very name screams inequality and discrimination. It is a poisonous dogma that's irrelevant and outdated in modern society and today does nothing but harm. I'm glad to note that its fading slowly and losing popularity as more and more people are alienated by its nonsense completely at odds with real life.

I don't wish to enter a debate about it anyway. I don't care about it at all, I hate that it's encroaching into sites I used to enjoy visiting regularly and would be glad to see it gone so we can get back to the real issues of games sucking and why. Unity sucks, not because it's "sexist" (which I don't really believe it is), but because it's generic AAA garbage rehashed year on year. I don't care about Tomadachi Life, not because of any social statement but because it looks boring as heck. I don't care about them, I don't care if they are or aren't making a social statement, I care that they simply suck and hold no interest to me. I still wouldn't have bought Unity if it had playable women, and I wouldn't buy TL if it had same-sex relationships.

Corporate industry creates products to sell and make as much money from as they can. Further, freedom of art and expression mean artists should be free to create whatever they choose. Would it be nice to see more diversity in games? Sure. But if it sold, it would be getting made. If figures showed that games offering a non-generic white dude sold less than those that had one, what would any one of us do, were we given the purse strings and power to greenlight? This is a question, not my opinion. This is devil's advocate portraying a different view.

 

[Callate]

I agree with most of what Yahtzee's said. I think under-representation of female protagonists in games is a broad issue with the industry, and Ubisoft just happens to have become the lightning rod for it, not that they're the only or even the worst offender.

However, it's really never been easier to make an "indie" game and have it reach a large audience. The tools for creating such are widely available and cheap, and I can hardly imagine a better way to show that there really exists a significant audience looking for good games with female heroines that to create one.

That would, however, require more work, exposure, and discomfort than coining a new hashtag and getting the constant affirmation of the like-minded.