Is it time for feminists to step off our hobby?

[Dragonbums]

Hey, if it gets more non-straight white males* in games, then sure they can stay as long as the like (although I'm not sure how one would go about suddenly "getting rid of them")

*[sub]I say this as a straight, white male, by the way. I just want something a little different[/sub]

Anyway, I've not heard of these "feminist demands" of which you speak. Were they etched in stone by Anita Sarkeesian, by any chance?

This is directed at everyone who shares the opinion, not just you but:
"Hey, if it gets more non-straight white males* in games, then sure they can stay as long as they like"
Why do we want this?
I mean sure, its not a bad thing if the character is different but I can't name a single game where the characters sexuality, gender or race would change a bloody thing.
Well except maybe gender, but it normally wouldn't change the game itself in any meaningful way.

A game is not going to be held up or even majorly effected by any of these factors. I'd prefer they put effort into the personality/character of the protag rather than what they look like.
Or hell, heres an idea; The gameplay!

Honestly, for myself, I'm just sick of seeing the same 20-30 year old white guy with (probably) brown hair.

For those that aren't "the norm", I imagine it will be nice for them to have some representation. I have no idea how that would feel obviously, so perhaps someone who isn't a straight white male would be able to explain better.

It depends on who's asking. As someone who is black and female the chances of ever seeing a black women in games, yet alone as a protagonist is at an all time high of 5% in the history of ever. So me personally, I've accepted this (sadly) and don't even bother trying to argue. Just advocating for women protags in general is tiring enough. A black one? Fat chance.

Of course if I did see one, man oh man would I be so fucking happy....but yeah...not happening any time soon.

 

[PDugna]

What many feminists think their critique of the hobby of gaming is what most guys think of their critique of the romance novels are. They're usually so stupidly blunt that most people inside the hobby find them quite annoying, like Anita she's not a critic and I will never see her as one. She can point out all the damn tropes she wants but just pointing them out doesn't do anything much besides get some people to go "hmm maybe I can look at it slightly different" most of the time they never fully change.

What Anita is doing though is causing annoyances in the gaming industry not because she's a women or a feminist it's because she antagonizes many people both male and female and then goes "They just don't like my work because they're misogynistic" No Anita most people don't like your because you shit on their favorite characters and never look at how they're actually portrayed in a the medium.

The only real way to enact change without so much damn pushback to get to making the games other people want in the industry, while leaving the other groups alone. After that's all said and done then people can make there way to other games and explore and expand.

Still the best way for the industry to go is how japan is setup, the direction some want the west to go will only lead to more closed houses and more hatred.

 

[Ranorak]

I am a straight White Male, age 27, and I sometimes buy alternate costumes for female fighting game characters because they reveal less, so that I don't feel as bad about playing them.

Seriously, just load any big fighting game that is not a licences product, and you'll see more panties then a underwear store and more jiggles then a pudding factory.

 

[m19]

Maddox pouring truth tea. Not about gaming but relevant.

 

[Something Amyss]

I have heard of that slanted/loaded study several times, asked for study itself and didn't get the answer. I looked around the net, didn't find any study that would fit your description. Can you point me in direction of that study?

You'll have to wait until the next MRA assaults me with it. I don't keep it on hand because I'm not normally the one attempting to produce it. The British one frequently cited is the equivalent of the Klan releasing a study to the effect that white people are the most discriminated against, but there's more than one study used and they have different issues.

But since it's not my argument, I don't keep "men are raped more than women" studies around. Hell, I don't generally keep links to any study I find disingenuous, "my side" or otherwise.

 

[Racecarlock]

I'm not comparing gamers to black people, I'm comparing people making that argument to racists.

And that's where you lose me, because this is not the civil rights movement, it's not the stonewall riots, and it certainly isn't the god damn underground railroad. You're just crafting this narrative where the eeeeeeeeeeeevil feminists control social media and have made you some oppressed minority despite having no good evidence to that effect.

Oh, you got death threats and didn't care? Good for you. I'm glad you give so little fucks. But that doesn't mean other people aren't allowed to get effected by it, and I don't care whether one specific user harassed a female, since plenty of others obviously did.

Again, stop making shit up.

 

[Silvanus]

It is not. Our hobby is not sacred, and it should not enjoy freedom from criticism.

In the long run, art is often richer for the presence of criticism.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

At the end of the day. Just like what you like, regardless of what anyone says. I mean, your not playing games for them, so why should it matter? If you do like it, like it. If you don;'t like it, go do something else.

 

[Something Amyss]

She's not a lawyer, but she's damn good at manipulating social media and capitalizing on victimhood. Her goal is ultimately the same though -- gaming doesn't meet her delicate sensibilities, so she wants to push it until it does. She's just doing it by pretending to be an academic and banking on victimhood to cover up the fact that she consistently misrepresents things, plagiarizes, and occasionally outright lies.

You made a lot of pretty specific claims there, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you can back up roughly none of them.

Though by all means, feel free to try. I would not profess to know the inner workings of your mind, even though you seem to feel it's okay to do the same to Anita.

 

[Mandalore_15]

Take The Last Of Us: for my money, this was one of the inclusive, all-round diverse games ever, with female characters oozing with personality and inner-strength. Ellie is perhaps one of the best written characters in any medium ever, regardless of gender.

So I was pretty surprised to find (as were Naughty Dog, apparently) that the game garnered a not-insignificant amount of criticism for being "sexist".

I have to lift my hand here: I'm one of those who found TLOU sexist.

Ellie was well written and all, but when it comes down to it, she was just another poor frail female character that the usual male, white, straight, mid-40 protagonist must protect and save.

If TLOU wanted to earn my praise, it should have made us play as Ellie. The first minutes of the game, where you play as the Male White Protagonist's daughter, were the best and most original part of the entire game. Now imagine playing the entire game as a little girl all alone with monsters and crazy people. Now THAT will make you feel in danger.

I don't know if you have played the game all the way through (so be warned of SPOILERS coming up), but...

There is a LARGE section of the game where you play as Ellie. And yes, it is one of the most harrowing and scary parts of the game. Also, if you play the Left Behind DLC - where you also play exclusively as her - you will see she is incredibly well rounded as a character, as it fleshes her back story out a lot. Also, her frailty is to do with her age (she is 14) and merely physical, emotionally and intellectually she is FAR stronger than Joel, which is shown at many points throughout the story.

 

[Marsell]

for some reason when I hear something anita related, my mind goes back to the whole tina/antina thing that happened with dilbert comics

 

[BloatedGuppy]

This. Feminism honestly needs to start policing itself because the "defenders" are just as vitriolic and aggressive as the attackers.

Oh good idea. We'll bring this up at the next feminists meeting, and anyone breaking the rules will have their charter membership revoked.

Conversely, rather than asking a dilute demographic that numbers in the tens if not hundreds of millions to "police itself", we could just...you know...exercise critical thinking when we encounter opinions.

 

[Schadrach]

I'm not comparing gamers to black people, I'm comparing people making that argument to racists.

And that's where you lose me, because this is not the civil rights movement, it's not the stonewall riots, and it certainly isn't the god damn underground railroad. You're just crafting this narrative where the eeeeeeeeeeeevil feminists control social media and have made you some oppressed minority despite having no good evidence to that effect.

It's like you missed exactly the point of the bit around the part you quoted. I literally said that I wasn't comparing gamers to black people, because I'm not arguing gamers are some kind of oppressed minority.

I'm comparing the "gamers are misogynistic harassers" bullshit to arguments used by racists to justify their views to themselves. That is to say using a tiny, tiny minority who behaves badly as a brush with which to paint an entire population. You know, because that entire argument is fallacious.

Saying "You saw that tweet $VICTIM got where they were called female-specific bad words? That just shows you that the gaming community is a bunch of misogynistic assholes" is built on the same shaky logical ground as "You see that $RACIAL_SLUR on camera robbing that gas station on the news last night? That just shows you that the $RACE community is a bunch of criminal scum." It's the same argument, and it's just as wrong of an argument because the argument itself is flawed (specifically, it's a fallacy of composition), much like the racist version of it is equally wrong whether your talking about blacks, Mexicans, or whoever is the next race that it becomes popular to hate.

Oh, you got death threats and didn't care? Good for you. I'm glad you give so little fucks. But that doesn't mean other people aren't allowed to get effected by it, and I don't care whether one specific user harassed a female, since plenty of others obviously did.

WizardChan is the group that was allegedly responsible for all the harassment Zoe Quinn received when she put her game up on Greenlight (Dec 2013), and the response to it was why her game got promptly Greenlit (becuse if a woman can show people say mean things about her, parts of the internet will give her whatever she needs). They're a forum for (and I mean this literally) 30+ year old depressed male virgins. The name is a reference to an internet meme, and one of the larger boards on the site has a suicide hotline at the top of the page. The story was popularized in gaming media without checking into it, because checking into it would have revealed it as a farce, but it met the desired narrative so why bother doing any fact-checking?

As for my own threats, my point was that anyone who says anything controversial gets death threats, generally in proportion with how visible they are and how many people don't like their message (for example, I *really* wouldn't want to be someone like thunderf00t or TheAmazingAthiest, because I imagine they get vast amounts of hatemail from the size of their channels). It's literally not about them being a woman, except that their being visibly a woman changes which lexicon of insults and threats will be used.

Let me put it this way, are these the kinds of things that someone gets told for being a woman on the internet being critical about video games, the sort of attacks that would never ever be directed at a man?

Spoiler: NSFW vicious things said in this spoiler

"Anita Sarkeesian is a ****"

"This girl needs to take a vacation with a cinder block to the bottom of the Pacific, so that maybe everyone will finally stop bitching about her."

"Nice. Anita Sarkeesian is getting on everyones nerves and fucking pissing everyone off. Sum1 should go to her relatives homes, fuck her mom, rape her dad then ram a red hot iron bar into her pussy. She seriously needs to do everyone a favor for once and die. That mother fucking anti gamer shit. Oh well we cant blame her for doing this line of work. Hey not everyone has normal brains."

"Wow does this girl have to complain about everything, like comon there just video games. and exactly she is just a publicity whore."

"Does anyone know Anita Sarkeesian?s address? i wanna kill her."

"I hope Anita Sarkeesian slips in a puddle of aids and falls on a jagged piece of rusty metal and it penetrates her spincter, thus giving her aids and tetnus, and she will get lockjaw from tetnus which would shut that **** up untill she succombs to the aids."

"I just sent Anita Sarkeesian yet another email. I wonder when she?ll respond to all those hatemail I sent her?"

"The girl is a fucktarded fucking ****"

"I hope she fucking dies."

"I?ve got another Musket fully loaded and hanging on my wall with her name on it."

"OMG! Anita Sarkeesian is a **** and should be shot and killed dead and I hate Anita Sarkeesian and she doesnt know fuck all about games and gamers and she is a ****"

"I can?t wait until Anita Sarkeesian dies. At least earthworms will benefit from her existence then."

"I hope she goes to africa and gets buttf*cked by a gorilla and dies of aids."

"I also agree that she should be butt fucked "

Are they? If you think so, then check the spoiler below:

Spoiler

If you replace the name, change the pronoun genders, and replace "pussy" with "dick" on the iron bar one, those are all said about/to Jack Thompson. Shockingly, people are assholes on the internet, even to people who have a penis. It's what they call the "online disinhibition effect", sometimes referred to as GIFT.

 

[Schadrach]

Oh good idea. We'll bring this up at the next feminists meeting, and anyone breaking the rules will have their charter membership revoked.

Conversely, rather than asking a dilute demographic that numbers in the tens if not hundreds of millions to "police itself", we could just...you know...exercise critical thinking when we encounter opinions.

That's exactly what people making claims about the "gaming community" are doing, though (including the amusing assumption that anyone who disagrees with them is necessarily a cis straight white male). Why should that be permissible behavior from one side and not the other?

I still find it amusing the number of middle class white women who believe that anyone who isn't a cis straight white male that disagrees with them is being controlled, manipulated, or is lying about their identity. Just watch #notyourshield for an amusing number of examples.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

That's exactly what people making claims about the "gaming community" are doing, though (including the amusing assumption that anyone who disagrees with them is necessarily a cis straight white male). Why should that be permissible behavior from one side and not the other?

You'll always find "people" are doing and saying crazy things. I didn't say that. I've long disputed the use of the term "gamer" as a blanket term. We don't group people together as "television watchers". Gaming is a mainstream hobby now. We are not a hive mind. How the fuck are "gamers" supposed to police themselves? If some idiot is popping off in chat on his 360, am I supposed to detect that from half a world away and amend his behavior?

I still find it amusing the number of middle class white women who believe that anyone who isn't a cis straight white male that disagrees with them is being controlled, manipulated, or is lying about their identity. Just watch #notyourshield for an amusing number of examples.

Any time you throw a blanket over a particular gender, race, or demographic, and start getting "amused" by what you perceive as shared characteristics, you are engaging in prejudicial thinking. I'm not drawing any conclusions about your character from that, just pointing out lazy/potentially distasteful thinking. It's fuel for confirmation bias, and can eventually lead to just straight up bone-deep prejudice.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

A lot of the "controversies" in videogames (and arguably every form of media) are stirred up by the vocal minority. It's because of this that I usually don't really pay that much attention to them. It's not like they have that much of an effect on how games are made anyways.

 

[omega 616]

No.

I wouldn't call myself a feminist (to me, it sounds like white supremacists just what equality), I do want equal representation in our media. I want to play as a gay guy, a non sexualized woman, a trans-person, a person who at the start isn't sure of who they are but during the game (which is totally unrelated to the protagonists goal) finds themselves. (like playing Mass Effect but every so often they have a conversation about who or what they are into).

I am just bored as fuck of certain things in gaming, such has playing as a 20-40 year old white male (usually with brown hair). I am bored of skimpy armor or clothing in general on women. It's why when I can, I play as women in games (saints row and elder scrolls), then dress them up in NORMAL clothes ... in saints row, I had a woman that mainly wore a black business suit with saints colored high heels and accessories, she was womanly but didn't look like a whore!

I can't see how any kind of diversity is bad, why are you all so intent on playing as the same person?

 

[ObserverStatus]

This raises an important question: should game developers capitulate to feminist demands for a more inclusive range of characters in their games? My immediate answer is a resounding NO. As a person who works in a creative role myself, I value artistic integrity and creative vision far more than any tenuous elements of fairness or inclusivity attached to a work. Creators should feel free to choose the characters that suit the story they want to tell, and not bow to any pressure to have a gender/race/sexuality/etc. quota in their cast list. The same goes for those characters' personalities: there ARE weak women in the world, just as there are strong women, and the same for men. Choosing characters that fit these roles in no way makes a broad statement about a gender as a whole, it's just a dramatic device. Can you imagine William Golding being told he had to include some female characters in Lord Of The Flies? It simply wouldn't work in the context of the story and world he was creating.

And while we might disagree with some creative decisions, ultimately it's the creator's work to do with what he will. Whether that work lives or dies in the court of public opinion is up to us. We can criticise it on its merits, but extrapolating that to making broad statements about the developer's worldview is totally speculative and ultimately fruitless, particularly when they give us more inclusive games and receive just as much, if not more scrutiny.

Well, I'm going to have to say I disagree, in no small part because your arguments against feminists speaking their minds sound a lot like the arguments BioWare made when they wanted people to stop complaining about Mass Effect 3's ridiculous ending. The way I see it, there aren't enough major developers out their for gamers to just give up and buy someone else's games when the developers are clearly doing their jobs wrong, and when they are, the customers have the right to call them out on it, so long as it doesn't become harassment. Some people may disagree with feminists and say that the boob plate isn't sexist, just like how some people think that the reapers murdering trillions of people every 50,000 years is a logical way to prevent organic lifeforms from fighting with synthetic lifeforms, but the naysayers have the right to speak their minds in the hopes that developers will get their acts together.

 

[QuietlyListening]

No.

I wouldn't call myself a feminist (to me, it sounds like white supremacists just what equality), I do want equal representation in our media. I want to play as a gay guy, a non sexualized woman, a trans-person, a person who at the start isn't sure of who they are but during the game (which is totally unrelated to the protagonists goal) finds themselves. (like playing Mass Effect but every so often they have a conversation about who or what they are into).

I am just bored as fuck of certain things in gaming, such has playing as a 20-40 year old white male (usually with brown hair). I am bored of skimpy armor or clothing in general on women. It's why when I can, I play as women in games (saints row and elder scrolls), then dress them up in NORMAL clothes ... in saints row, I had a woman that mainly wore a black business suit with saints colored high heels and accessories, she was womanly but didn't look like a whore!

I can't see how any kind of diversity is bad, why are you all so intent on playing as the same person?

Tough. You're a feminist. (But it's OK. That's a good thing!)

Also, speaking of Saint's Row, I think it's worth it to keep in mind that Steve Jaros actually welcomes feminist critique.

 

[Karthak]

"Reads OP". Jesus H. Christ, where to even begin? I'm really tired, so I'll let David Gaider speak for me:
http://www.cnet.com/news/the-risk-of-the-female-protagonist/

"Wright believes that the perception of risk is sadly misplaced. Rather than being worried about alienating the current perceived demographics, he said, developers should be concerned about alienating those who would like to see more diversity.

"AAA games are now so expensive to develop and launch, and must sell so many copies to break even, that it's of critical importance that they are as inclusive as possible and do not exclude large portions potential audience, especially when there are so many alternatives to choose from," he said. "In my view, it's more commercially risky to exclude the very significant female audience than it is to risk alienating some of the less progressive audience."