Is it time for feminists to step off our hobby?

[BloatedGuppy]

Too... Much... Credit... to novels.

The average in literature today, is... well... about Call of Duty level. Sorry, I completely disagree on that part, Ellie is QUITE well done by ANY standards.

I am not saying there aren't better characters (there are in gaming too ), but I believe your perception here was formed by the literature's elite, the classics, the finest of a 5000+ year old art form.

I tend to limit my sampling of film, television and literature to each medium's consensus better offerings. There is only so much time in one life, and I don't intend to fritter it away on dreck. As "The Last of Us" represents the rarefied 1% of games that even HAVE stories and characters worthy of the name, surely it merits comparison to the best of other mediums?

Because if I was going to pick a humdrum, run of the mill game to run against a humdrum, run of the mill novel, it wouldn't be "The Last of Us". It probably wouldn't even be Call of Duty.

 

[EternallyBored]

Gah, double post ignore this

 

[Guerilla]

Did you not hear what happened to Remember me? Or what about Bioshock and the publishers putting Elizabeth on the back of the box. Or about how developers for the Last of us had to demand both female focus testers and to put Ellie on the front of the box?

I think you're confusing creative freedom with marketing decisions. I don't give a crap about what marketing does to ads or covers but there's certainly a reason for it and it's because core gamers are mainly male. As for Remember me, it was disaster both critically and commercially so I think publishers had WAY more than one reason for rejecting it. I seriously doubt this was even one.

 

[Phil the Nervous]

No, that's how you get a bunch of people whining at anyone who'll listen. That's how a majority of lazy, talentless individuals jump on a bandwagon together and yell until people get tired of them. If your solution to not having food is to ***** until someone feeds you then you deserve to starve. If your solution to misrepresentation in games is to ***** until someone changes their behavior to suit you you deserve to be left out.

The solution is to change it yourself. Not whine until your mother feeds you.

This is a disingenuous representation and bad logic, part of changing something is to talk about it and to advocate for change, especially in cases where the change is being advocated from at a citizen or consumer level. The civil rights movement didn't work because people changed it themselves, they took action, but much of what was accomplished in the beginning was due to "complaining", protesting, and convincing people who were already in positions of power to change their minds. To use a less drastic example, before people mistakenly think I'm trying to equate consumer advocacy to the civil rights movement, many recalls and consumer policy changes are made due to lobbying and talking to the actual corporations where change is desired, and in many cases it works.

You are basically lumping all forms of complaint into "whining", which is disingenuous and wrong, "whining" has accomplished much throughout history, and will accomplish much more, because society cannot support itself if every person tried to personally get involved and actively change an industry within every time they dislike something about it, it doesn't work that way, and while you can work to get more sympathetic people into positions of power, the first step is usually to convince those already in power to sympathize with your cause and beliefs, history has proven it to be an effective tactic for years now, especially in the age of instant communication.

I agree with you 110% in the political realm. There have been and still are injustices in the law which are not changed except by people using their democratic rights to free speech and assembly.

I disagree with the concept when it is applied to consumer-driven business. There are already methods in place to change the minds of businesses (not buying the product) and forcing all people to adapt to the views of the loudest person is a horrible precedent.

The method I have a problem with is this:
"If you can't win by reason win by volume"

Unverifiable claims and insults

Yeah, we're done here

 

[white_wolf]

Yep. Because somehow not having more diversity in protagonists is both the artistic vision of the developers and because games without the "standard" protagonist just don't sell.

The reality is probably a lot closer to publishers choosing to only fund games that already are, or can easily be tweaked to become, what they believe will sell. So if artistic integrity has anything to do with it we are only seeing a percentage of what the developers want to create.

That's called a moral equivalence fallacy. You basically make excuses for one wrong by focusing on a different one. If you have evidence that publishers compromise the artistic vision of developers by not allowing them to have more diversity then please post them. Until then you have no leg to stand on with this argument and is completely irrelevant to the subject.

Did you not hear what happened to Remember me? Or what about Bioshock and the publishers putting Elizabeth on the back of the box. Or about how developers for the Last of us had to demand both female focus testers and to put Ellie on the front of the box?

Wish I would've saved the comment posts from three people stating they were (unrelated) devs two of which sited working for major studios that said yeah their game pitches had been rejected so many times based solely on the fact of their lead was female they either stopped writing new material or kepted getting laughed at in meetings and got known around the office as that guy who or that team who keep wanting women in games. One dev said he and his whole team love making fem heroines but keep getting told by publishers and others that while they love the concept, mechanics, and plot the fem lead has to be made male. He told his team they'd no longer be doing those pitches because even with artwork, demos, and 3D models made they just kept wasting their time being shot down or told to get rid of her maybe they'll retry now that its gotten like it is.

 

[Guerilla]

Even if your description is 100% accurate and in no sense rhetorical, no it doesn't.

I mean your conclusions literally don't follow from your premise on more than the most tenuous and circumstantial basis. At best, that's evidence, not proof. You have to connect quite a few more dots before Anita Sarkeesian getting too much money on Kickstarter proves a systemic infiltration of feminism into gaming. At the very least, there's at least as many examples of feminists and women being harassed and bullied, so wouldn't that prove the feminists' necessity by your reasoning?

There's obviously no way you'll concede to this so I give up. You purposely dismiss all kinds of proof.

"Gamers" and Reddit do a pretty good job of portraying that image and "gamers" aren't above abusing their own stereotype against one another in any context other than gaming "journalism" and gender politics. They're so thick-skinned and above the need for nuanced discourse until they're not.

Like I said, this is SJW bullshit noone takes seriously. You want it to be true because feminism is currently being rejected by the gaming community like a bad transplant.

Well, a recent study just showed adult women are now a significantly larger demographic than the mythic "teenage boy", they buy games at an equal rate to men, and "gamers" have helpfully pointed out women make up 48% of the gaming demographic total. Do you think future games will reflect this? Or will they continue to pander to teenage boys because... reasons?

Once again, wrong. The study shows that women play a lot of puzzle games and social games. Core games are male dominated as per usual. Btw, fun fact, puzzle games are constantly pandering to women and you don't see one male whining about it. Not one.

Moreover, aren't "gamers" the same lot who ***** about COD being so popular despite being so Libertarian when it comes to representation of minorities in games? The market has decided we need more generic military first-person shooters at the expense of whatever creative, but risky ventures there might be.

What do you mean by "Libertarian when it comes to representation of minorities in games"?

 

[EternallyBored]

I agree with you 110% in the political realm. There have been and still are injustices in the law which are not changed except by people using their democratic rights to free speech and assembly.

I disagree with the concept when it is applied to consumer-driven business. There are already methods in place to change the minds of businesses (not buying the product) and forcing all people to adapt to the views of the loudest person is a horrible precedent.

The method I have a problem with is this:
"If you can't win by reason win by volume"

Except, advocacy works in the corporate and consumer arena all the time, and not just through boycotts, in fact, boycotts by themselves are terrible advocacy, almost never work, and marketing classes will specifically teach people to try to get their audience to speak out about what they want or don't want.

Most fast food companies that have changed their treatment of livestock have done so, not through just boycotts, but through people communicating with the executives and the lawmakers of various countries.

Even in less drastic cases, companies will often purposely seek out the loudest voices to communicate with them and what their issues are, because a loud voice, even a dumb loud voice, is still infinitely preferable to silence, and marketing classes will often teach students that even the loudest most irrational voices can be born of a rational concern, and following them will lead you past the ideologues to the customers with genuine rational concern that they wish to share with you.

Ignoring the loudest complainers does not negate the issues and desires raised by the more rational proponents of any movement, there is no precedent to set, companies can make mistakes, but large companies especially, tend to prefer that people speak up about their disatisfactions rather than remain silent, as a marketing friend of mine once told me (and it's been years so I'm paraphrasing):

"I'll take a loud idiot who will actually tell me what they want straight up over someone who only spews platitudes and empty waffling dialogue any day of the week"

 

[Evil Smurf]

Ahem...

Feminism should be in everything, as feminism is a cause for the betterment of the human race, and unless you're a bigot you won't mind that.

 

[psijac]

Games is a billion dollar industry. If they don't win this space then they will be forced into mediocrity for another generation. It doesn't matter if you are a Feminist, Scientologists, or Future Farmer of America, if you don't even attempt to enter Gamer/Nerd Culture then you are loosing.

Please, why would anyone have to enter nerd/gamer culture? If I would be hard pressed to guess how many gamers are immersed in gaming "culture" I would have hard time imagining number higher than 5%. People don't give a damn about gaming "culture". They enjoy the medium. They enjoy their GTAs, their Candy Crushes, their Gran Turismos, their Minecrafts, their Farmviles, their Street Fighters, their Plants VS Zombies.

They enjoy their T'n'A on screen, they enjoy their unicorns, their bloodshed, their carefully created villages, their ultra combos of pain, their love stories, they take down huge monstrous dragons, and lovingly raise cute ones.

There is something for everyone in this culture. And like books, movies, music, paintings, sculptures etc vast majority doesn't give a damn about surrounding culture or their origin. They are there to be entertained, to enjoy the beauty, to have deep philosophical moments, to work out their stress and release their anger, to enjoy the competition, to take a quiet moment just for themselves, to retreat to their childhood, to ponder the future.

Do you really thing that all of them have desire to dive deeper in? I wouldn't agree with that notion.

You know what I see when I think about gaming "culture". Neo-nazi and black homosexual mentally challenged jew playing Mario Cart together and having the time of their lives and not caring even a tiniest bit about some "culture" that games supposedly have around them.

http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/

7 out of the top ten draw their source material from geekdom. Avatar had a anti-corporation/pro-green message. Black Widow is the Sarkisian definition of "Fighting Fuck toy" It's not about playing games, anyone with opposable thumbs can play a video game. Its about pushing forth an agenda. Control the culture, control the message.

 

[Guerilla]

I really wish I would have trusted my instinct and made an allusion to you inevitably narrowing the definition of "gaming". Ignoring that "core games" is a nebulous concept that would preclude classics like Pac-Man and Super Mario and is currently wrestling with how "core" iOS games are based on which ones they enjoy, why is it that rather than using these "casual" games as stepping stones to get women interested in "real" games, "gamers" put up a wall, stand atop it, and sneet "Look at those women playing those fake games!"

Deigning yourself the gatekeepers of legitimacy is, surprise surprise, an example of privilege. Not to mention, the very thing you criticize the "censors" of.

Just a question: Tetris is a puzzle game; is it pandering to women? What are you insinuating by declaring puzzle games women games?

I did NOT narrow the definition of gaming. There are core games and there are other kind of games. We were discussing specifically representation of women in core games or if you want action adventure/shooter/RPG etc games. These genres are dominated by males which explains developers focusing on them. It's funny how you completely ignored my point about puzzle GAMES.

I mean "letting the market decide". How many classics would have been tossed into the rubbish been if "the market" was the final decider for art?

Like I said I'm a socialist, I don't agree with letting the market always decide because that leads to the lowest common denominator games. On the other hand an industry pandering to its demographics isn't in any way exclusively capitalist, it just makes sense from any perspective possible. Are make up companies sexist for pandering to women?

 

[Guerilla]

My mistake. You divided games into two groups and labeled one less legitimate. Semantics, yay!

You also ignored my point about how the definition of "core" games is fluid (re: my example with iOS games) and permissive toward "casual" games a lot of "core gamers" like such as Minecraft. When you add in things like difficulty settings and checkpoint systems, the distinction becomes increasingly blurry even if you can point to outliers like Candy Crush Saga. You almost can't die-die in Bioshock: Infinite, for example. What about "core" games that are easy as fuck and just lets the player glide through the story points? What makes them "core" other than being released by the big studios and having the content expected of a "core" game? What if there was a "Farmville" with the difficulty curve of Ninja Gaiden? Dwarf Fortress looks more like a "casual" game than a "core" game, but is more hardcore than any of the Call of Duties. What about the Wii? I'm sure there are hardcore gamers who dismiss most of that system's catalog as "casual" despite Nintendo being almost synonymous with "core" gaming from a historical perspective. Explain this to me.

Your distinction exists to say, "The sort of games women mainly play aren't real games, therefore their input doesn't hold equal weight and they're not entitled to the same respect from the industry men get. Their money's just as good, though..." Never mind I imagine there's overlap with women playing both casual and "core" games.

My distinction exists to explain that the two genders have different preferences which explains why certain game genres pander to specific genders. As per usual you made a crapload of assumptions to reach the point where you can be offended.

So you believe in demographics when it's convenient to you. There's no market reason for preventing the path to "the lowest common denominator". That would almost axiomatically be the most profitable, pragmatic thing for game developers to pursue. It'd just make sense, as you put it. You're expressing the same idealism you're critiquing in others for... reasons. Important man reasons, though!

There's a difference between working for the demographics that buy from you and games/media exploiting our lowest instincts to sell. Lowest common denominator isn't about demographics, it's about selling easily consumed crap. And btw once again you didn't tell us if make up companies are sexist or not.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I can't wait to get the Male Tears franchise up and running.

I can't tell if you're kidding on the square. I seriously hope not.

Feminists never kid.

I'm thinking we're going to follow it up with Eternal Patricide and The Matriarchy, the latter of which is going to be a big-budget MMO set in a female-only utopia.

I've preordered Male Tears already, the proposed fedora bros zombie level looks hilarious.

 

[Guerilla]

No, I asked a series of questions I imagine you don't want to attempt to answer because doing so doesn't help your point.

Let's examine what pandering entails:

For women, it's being filled with silly girly shit like pink and rainbows.

Have you met women? Many women like that girly rainbow "shit" and especially young ones. So who's being a sexist here?

For men, according to you, it requires titties and no regard for how women are depicted.

For men it's dark themes, swords, explosions, adventure and yes tits. You have a problem with male sexuality and I'm the conservative? Not actively looking for a reason to be offended doesn't make me a conservative, it makes me a normal human being.

If there were swaths of male gamers alienated away from puzzle games because banana hammocks and a Fifty Shades of Grey subtext was just the norm, perhaps your equivalence would hold more merit. My point isn't that genres have to attract certain demographics in a 50/50 split; how about just not actively repelling some demographics for questionable reasons like "Men just won't engage nothing if the women aren't wearing headbands as shirts..."

So the sexuality part is what drives the other gender away. Yeah, now I remember another reason why I don't like feminists anymore, they're so annoyingly puritanical. Sexuality doesn't repel anyone but the warriors who pretend to represent women. Off the top of my head I can think of two female friends of mine who have characters with fairly big tits and cleavage. Not all women are self-victimizing assholes looking for a reason to be offended, in fact I'm quite sure the vast majority of them don't give a flying fuck about the cleavage of a character. Only prudes care about this shit.

No there isn't. Pandering is exploiting the lowest instincts of your consumer to sell. Pander doesn't have the neutral or positive connotation you seem to believe it does. Again, what non-subjective reason can you provide against "easily consumed crap" None, it's a matter of your own taste. Why can't others speak out against what they perceive as "easily consumed crap" in terms of gender representation?

As far as lipstick goes, it depends. Assuming it's mostly women buying lipstick? No. If lipstick advertisement had an undercurrent that could be perceived as hostile against the men buying it? Maybe.

Games do NOT have an undercurrent hostile towards women, stop making shit up and presenting it as facts. Not pandering to women just like lipstick companies don't pander to men does NOT mean it's hostile towards women. Please, stop repeatedly making leaps of logic and assumptions.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I don't like to use the term "feminazi" as I believe it's loaded and over-used, but there are certainly people out there to whom it would apply and whom cannot be separated from the feminist movement.

Did you know that Rush Limbaugh invented the term "feminazi"? Please don't use it, don't give credence to that ****.