Norithics said:
Is there a problem with the cheap way that sex appeal is used across the board? Yes.
Does that mean that individual games shouldn't be able to have it if they so choose? No.
And therein lies the devil of this subject: that there is no happy medium. You can't kind-of complain about something. I thought Dragon's Crown got hammered on completely unfairly, to the point of shaming the creators as invalids. I think that was completely uncalled for. At the same time, I don't ever want to go back to the time when nobody ever talked about this kind of thing, because keeping the concepts alive in the minds of the public and therefore the developers is important.
Agreed, there seems to be no neutral ground to be had here. I would agree that there are some games that can be seen as "problematic", but there seems to be no distinction between a game
containing for example misogyny, and a game
promoting misogyny, the two are very different.
Do we consider everyone who ever made a slasher film a rampaging misogynist for all the women being sliced up on screen? No, because it's not seen as promoting that behavior. Then why are games like for example GTA being framed as somehow promoting sexism, because the world it is presenting
contains it?
I find the Dragon's Crown hysteria laughable. The game's art style is so deliberately over the top that complaining about the "over-the-top-ness" (I know that's not a word) of one aspect seems quaint, at least to me. I mean, look at this: http://www.spriters-resource.com/resources/sheets/54/57242.png does anyone think this reflects a real representation of
anything?