Is it time for feminists to step off our hobby?

[BloatedGuppy]

And that is fine . Seems like you are quite lucky and maybe many critics share your tastes.

I have tried listening to critics. It was 50/50. I got f*cked over more then a few times.

Most of my favourite media were not by reviews. A fair part of my greatest disappointments... were due to reviews.

An example I can give is Bioshock Infinite. I read and watched quite the number of reviews before buying it. Almost all were critical acclaim and general concensus by the gaming community was VERY positive (on release).

That was the worst purchase I did last year. Mediocre game in almost all areas bar graphics/sound, art style and maybe ambition. If I were to give it a score, it would be a 6/10 at most.

And opposite of that we have STALKER Clear Sky. A game with 75/100 on metacritic, quite a bit lower then what Infinite has... and damn, that is one of the finest games I have had the pleasure of playing.

So it seems like 2 different experiences here. For you, it seems like most of the time, reviews are helpful and somewhat correspond to your tastes. For me, most of the time they are useless.

Cant comment on movies and books though. I dont really frequent IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes. I just watch what my family recommends, what my friends recommend and what sounds interesting. I do get stung, true, but I am not exactly an expert there anyway.

Your quoting screwed up...I'm going to try to reply to this the best I can but it's a bit of a mess to parse stuff out of.

"Rotten Tomatoes" is not a critic, it's just a critical consensus. Like Metacritic, but with less "weighting". You can disagree with an individual critic, no two people have exactly the same tastes. Critical consensus though...it's pretty rare that the vast majority of critics despise something and it turns out excellent. I won't say it's impossible, I'll just go ahead and say I've yet to see it. Games criticism is a little different...we're in an awkward situation where the people who are criticizing the medium have their salaries paid for by advertising BY the medium. I'm not going to come right out and say it affects the scores directly, but I'm uh...going to imply it.

That said, I adored Bioshock Infinite. Yeah it was a bit rubbish as a shooter, but I played it more as a story-driven adventure game with shooty bits than as a shooter. People want different things from games. I would expect someone who prizes mechanics above all other things to, say, read a 9/10 review of Gone Home very carefully to determine whether or not the things the reviewer is praising are things they personally enjoy. I think critically about the things I read about a film or game or book before buying it. I don't just say "90% wow! Day one purchase!". I consider the source, I read what they have to say, I check out user reviews, etc, etc, etc. Frankly the process I use for vetting things before buying them is getting somewhat laborious.

With books, I dont even know where to find review scores. I read on gut there. Same way I do my VG purchases now. It works quite well IMHO

I've been audiobook only for a while due to an eye problem. If I hear of a new book I want, I first scour audible for user reviews, both of the book and the narration, and then I usually check Amazon as well. I typically read a few of the 5/5 reviews as well as the 1/5 to see what people hated, in case it's something that also sets me off.

...overexaggerating...

Just "exaggerating" is fine. The "over" is redundant.

How do I even prove that? How do you prove the opposite ?

It's not that you PROVE it. You ESTABLISH an argument. You don't think The Last of Us is in rare company for the quality of video gaming narratives? Go to Wikipedia and look up all the other games released in its year. You can even go back 1-5 years. Count up all the games you think are competitive in terms of story and character. Now work out the total games released and get back to me as to just how many "strong" story/character games are actually out there. I'm willing to bet it's somewhere in the area of 1-5%, and I'm being EXTREMELY charitable at 5%.

To be fair I dont know either. I am not exactly sober today.

Heh. Okay, fair enough. =)

BTW, we seem to be improving the thread...

Alas, that is a low bar to clear.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Metro Last Light was MUCH better.

Got as far as the swamp area and just got fed up with it. Beautiful environmental graphics, but the game play left me wanting, and like the previous Metro the storytelling just felt a bit drab. I was completely without investment.

Gorgeous game though.

And I do suggest you play STALKER mate!

Already have done. Pripyat was an amazing game. Very tonally different from something like Bioshock though. Far better mechanically, but the storytelling in the STALKER games is uh...how to put it...absent.

I havent played many character dependand games in the last 5 years. As for competitive for story at least... well, there are a few. Some even better then TLOU too.

I've played a lot of them. I consider TLOU to be a game that shares a kind of sub-genre with other story-heavy, gameplay-light offerings like The Walking Dead, Bioshock Infinite, To the Moon, etc. And I consider it to rank near the bottom of that company, although I consider all those games worth playing for their story alone.

And there are a few, yes. A very select few. Of the 100-200 games released each year, a tiny fraction even HAVE stories, let alone good ones.

BTW where is the thread you were talking about mate? Maybe it got deleted when you cleaned up my quoting

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.859811-Im-getting-sick-of-the-Characters-and-story-in-gaming-is-lesser-than-other-mediums-argument

 

[BloatedGuppy]

See, the complete opposite. So it is subjective. I LOVED Metro's gameplay. It was one of the game's strong points, and damn was it strong for me. Same goes for storyline. That is a game I completed in 12 hours... without stop...

Is it seriously only 12 hours long? Booooo.

And again a small disagreement here. STALKER (well, except CoP) has a pretty damn interesting and good storyline. Problem is it does not get it across well.

No, it really doesn't. The story presentation bordered on laughable. Which is unfortunate, because otherwise the game was superb in nearly every aspect.

Also, another problem I guess, is that many or should I say the vast majority of its elements are woven into the environment or dialogue or level design.

Yes, STALKER, like Dark Souls, does indirect storytelling very well. Of course, so does Bioshock, the latter game just supplements it with traditional storytelling as well.

The vast majority of movies, books and shows each year are... well, rehashes, cheap knock offs or reused other books and movies. That counts for little with me, most are straight up garbage, worse then CoD's storyline

People like to hold up COD as the nadir of gaming storytelling because it's hot garbage, but in reality that hot garbage has more attention to narrative and character than the majority of games. Again, a great many games don't even HAVE stories to shit on, let alone bad ones. COD represents the cream of gaming storytelling. As I say this having nothing but seething disdain for COD and the way it tells a story.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Steam says I played 110 hours of it. It is correct :O...

The way Steam counts play time occasionally gets screwed up. Steam tells me I have played 247 hours of Bastion, a 10 hour game I played through exactly once.

If only Bioshock had half the gameplay, atmosphere, ambition and technology as STALKER... or System Shock 1... and 2.

It's just as ambitious. It's just ambitious in narrative, not in game play. Atmosphere is on par, just different. Tech is arguably better.

System Shock...the original game was WILDLY before its time. No one makes games like that any more. Not since EA devoured Origin and shat out its bones.

Good. You receive a point in my book for this reply.

Truth is, most people dont give it ANY credit at all... which is unfair, a lot of work goes into the games.

CoD represents a fairly decent storyline in gaming for me. And would be so even as a movie or TV show... or book.
If only it did not hold your hand as much...

COD is Michael Bay. It is what it is. It knows its audience, and panders to them directly. The only issue here is that Michael Bay films are considered amongst some of the worst in modern cinema, and CoD is arguably one of the better told set of stories in video gaming. And there's your gulf between the mediums. Our best is often barely on par with their worst.

 

[Something Amyss]

The way Steam counts play time occasionally gets screwed up. Steam tells me I have played 247 hours of Bastion, a 10 hour game I played through exactly once.

Hell, I've got games I've played for dozens of hours with zero time played on Steam, and I have one game with thousands of hours played that are undeserved. Two, technically, but one's probably closer to accurate.

 

[Sleix]

Feminism has been so grossly warped by a few individuals and definetly the media lately. No I'm not an SJW, no I'm not a feminist, the argument isn't oh so black and white. If people want to follow these people that so callously call themselves feminists, that's cool by me, and if people want to generalize an entire community, go ahead. I just play video games, I honestly couldn't give seven shades of shit about this, and neither should you.

 

[BadNewDingus]

So many people change the subject that it's just pointless to get pissed about anything. If something does piss you off, just wait a couple hours and it will die down or go into something else.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Also, you read The Witcher books ?

Nope. Played the games, not read the books. In order for me to read a book it has to A) be on Audible, B) be something I'd want to read, C) be LONG (I refuse to blow $15 on a 10 hour audiobook) D) get strong reviews.

Witcher books are too numerous and too short.

Hell, I've got games I've played for dozens of hours with zero time played on Steam, and I have one game with thousands of hours played that are undeserved. Two, technically, but one's probably closer to accurate.

Yeah it happened with Might and Magic Legacy too. I think it was tracking U-Play or something, which I just left open 24-7. Looked at Steam one day and it told me I'd played Legacy for ~400 hours.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

An honest question to the feminists, have you tried not being offended?

Have you?
Honestly, look at the forums these days, do you see more upset feminists or people upset ABOUT feminists?

Considering that the gaming and offtopic forum is currently host to topics with people trying to take offense on behalf of all gamers over inane comments, topics that have been taking offense and trying to get Moviebob fired because he said mean things to them, posting of blacklists over commenters that are seen as too "SJW", and this very topic which was pretty much started on the OP taking ridiculous amounts of offense and hyperbole all over the place, I think you are asking that question to the wrong group.

It has always been my view that gamers should stop making such posts. From the moment I joined the internet, people kept telling me "Don't feed the trolls." I never fully understood what it meant, and at times thought it was nonsensical, but seeing the forums flooded with "anti-feminists" posts makes me realizes the dangers I was being warned about.

But even if gamers are tossing massive amounts of fuel on the fire, its still a fire that radical feminists started. That doesn't excuse the behavior of gamers, and my plea to them is still to ignore all of this. Don't make posts about it and don't argue with it. Just ignore it. The best way to deal with an insane idea is not to debate it but to suppress it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

But even if gamers are tossing massive amounts of fuel on the fire, its still a fire that radical feminists started.

How, exactly? By criticizing a medium?

Why does that instigate an argument? Is the medium sacrosanct? Is it beyond criticism?

Do we need to censor critics and silence certain forms of criticism?

 

[Anaphyis]

Over a decade ago, I wasn't ashamed to call myself a gamer despite and violent games hysteria and the whole social stigma, especially among my own gender.

I am now. It's kind of funny, actually. What I do and love and am is getting more and more accepted by the general population while the gaming circles I've spent most of my life in get more hostile and disgusting with each passing day. And why? 'Radical feminists' pointing out that some aspects of today's game design are unsavory and need to be talked about. Yeah, clearly those raging harpies deserve all the death threats they get for trying to take away our strip- ehm, *fleshed out* female characters.

 

[nuclearday]

I'm a gamer, have been going back as far as being obsessed with my parents' Intellivision when I was 4 and it's been a love affair ever since. I was also raised with a belief that men and women ought to be treated fairly. That makes me a feminist.

I don't go into a feral rage every time I see a cliched representation of objectification of a woman in a video game. But I'm going to tend towards games that I feel have better writing and thought into them than that.

If, as a gamer, I want to speak about other over-used cliches or examples of lazy storytelling and characterization then that's an acceptable stance. It's expected, if a game has a lazy and boring narrative that someone's going to bring it up. This being the internet of course someone is going to disagree with me regardless of my position.

But if one of those cliches I criticize involves the characterization of a female character... it becomes a whole other thing, doesn't it?

I'm a feminist and a gamer and I've been both for about as long as it's been possible to be a gamer, and I was raised by parents who were themselves old-school gamers. From my point of view, I think it's time for the misogynists and trolls to step off of my hobby and stop giving gamers a bad name.

 

[EternallyBored]

It has always been my view that gamers should stop making such posts. From the moment I joined the internet, people kept telling me "Don't feed the trolls." I never fully understood what it meant, and at times thought it was nonsensical, but seeing the forums flooded with "anti-feminists" posts makes me realizes the dangers I was being warned about.

But even if gamers are tossing massive amounts of fuel on the fire, its still a fire that radical feminists started. That doesn't excuse the behavior of gamers, and my plea to them is still to ignore all of this. Don't make posts about it and don't argue with it. Just ignore it. The best way to deal with an insane idea is not to debate it but to suppress it.

People have been saying that across the internet since its inception, no one will ever completely listen no matter how much anyone pleas. It's not even really all about trolling, trolling is being inflamatory or extreme for responses or purposely starting arguments, many of the people on both sides of this debate do seriously and passionately believe in their positions, which makes "don't feed the trolls" a useless proposition. When you don't respond to a troll they go away because no one is taking their bait, when you ignore someone that actually believes what their saying, they don't go away, because attention isn't the only thing they are after. So even if the gaming community took your advice it would solve nothing, because many of the feminist posters are gamers themselves, so they will continue to critique games from a feminist perspective, and many of the reactionary gamers will continue to hold their views and vigorously engage with anyone they see as against them.

As for who started it, its a chicken and the egg scenario at this point, a lot of initial feminist critiques came about due to events from the more extreme hostile portions of the game community, like that fighting game reality show where it was revealed that the female team member was taking sexual harassment from her own team.

It's an endless cycle feeding into itself, and ignoring it won't make it go away, because unlike a troll, who doesn't actually believe what they say, actual extremists just take silence as an indication that they aren't yelling loud enough, and as long as both sides have at least one extremist alive to stir the pot, there will be flame wars.

 

[Phasmal]

But even if gamers are tossing massive amounts of fuel on the fire, its still a fire that radical feminists started. That doesn't excuse the behavior of gamers, and my plea to them is still to ignore all of this. Don't make posts about it and don't argue with it. Just ignore it. The best way to deal with an insane idea is not to debate it but to suppress it.

Ignore radical feminists all you like, but do you think me and the other people who want diversity in gaming are `radicals`?

Radical feminists are just a boogeyman here. I don't think this is an issue of radicals at all.
In fact, I think making this into a conversation about radical feminists is just another way to try and get people to shut up about it.
But perhaps I'm too cynical.

 

[white_wolf]

So the sexuality part is what drives the other gender away.

Yeah the sexuality can be a factor in driving women away or never picking up the game to start with there are reasons why men who date/married to female console gamers who play Witcher can't get them to try it because those women see them playing it and go its a porn simulator.

I also found a man commenting in a thread once stated he worked for a marketing firm that aided video games makers appeal he stated a case he undertook of a developer who made an RPG and wanted to boarden their market even more prior to this for 5 years the game was holding steady with its players and at a split of 40%F and 50%M players this man told this developer decloth your female avatars and npcs and while your at it sex them up inflate their breast, the dev did as instructed and the numbers switched 20%F to 70%M that game dev sacrificed its fem base for more men and cash. Not to mention all the women (and some men) on here can tell you about the games they haven't picked up do to the way the women in any game are treated and look ( like to scantily dressed for their role or weather compared to the men of the same) in game or portrayed in advertising that turns them off.

 

[Guerilla]

So the sexuality part is what drives the other gender away.

Yeah the sexuality can be a factor in driving women away or never picking up the game to start with there are reasons why men who date/married to female console gamers who play Witcher can't get them to try it because those women see them playing it and go its a porn simulator.

I also found a man commenting in a thread once stated he worked for a marketing firm that aided video games makers appeal he stated a case he undertook of a developer who made an RPG and wanted to boarden their market even more prior to this for 5 years the game was holding steady with its players and at a split of 40%F and 50%M players this man told this developer decloth your female avatars and npcs and while your at it sex them up inflate their breast, the dev did as instructed and the numbers switched 20%F to 70%M that game dev sacrificed its fem base for more men and cash. Not to mention all the women (and some men) on here can tell you about the games they haven't picked up do to the way the women in any game are treated and look ( like to scantily dressed for their role or weather compared to the men of the same) in game or portrayed in advertising that turns them off.

A lot of anecdotal evidence and unsourced material. In my experience women aren't that prude and many of them have no problem with porn. Then again I'm not an American so maybe that's the problem since there's a difference culture about sex there.

Also, did you consider that maybe it wasn't women that left at all but men that came that caused the percentages to change?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

A lot of anecdotal evidence and unsourced material. In my experience women aren't that prude and many of them have no problem with porn. Then again I'm not an American so maybe that's the problem since there's a difference culture about sex there.

Statistics demonstrate that a majority of women watch porn. I think it was up around 80-85%. How much they watch, and WHICH porn they are watching, likely differs. There is no question that the vast majority of pornographic material is made by men for men, just like the vast majority of titillation in games is made by men for men. That doesn't mean every woman who views it is going to throw their arms in the air in disgust, but it's not really FOR them any more than a bunch of lubed up, glistening hunks would be aimed at me.

 

[Mandalore_15]

The fact that you can question sexism in videogames at this point is so troll... Our hobby was no mistake, you see them as outside even though the center of this shitstorm is that they are inside. They have the freaking gate keys, you know what they were? ANY GAME SYSTEM AND ANY GAME. Turns out you can get in for like 5 bucks.

I'm sorry you see my attempts to open a discussion about sexism as trolling, but I would question it, particularly as you are telling me what I think which is patently wrong. I acknowledge that women who consider themselves feminists make up part of gaming culture because to do otherwise would be absurd. Gamers are pretty much the most diverse group of people there is.

What I am seeing though is that culture being fractured by over-zealous ideologues. Sure there are some horrendous people harassing feminists and that shit shouldn't stand, but the flip-side of the coin is that feminists such as Sarkeesian have basically said that if you like games or disagree that certain games are sexist then you're a misogynist. That's pretty damn offensive.

Listen, you get to control who you respect in life. You don't respect most women, when they tell you about a problem you don't see why you should care, or you don't see how it relates to you, or you try to fix it as if it was your own problem. These things are a lack of respect. When someone you do respect has a problem you aid them. You take their side and listen. I don't know who you respect, your dad maybe? And if someone called your dad a slur and hit him and he cried, you would get mad, invested, right? You decide what is important this way, what your empathy will be used on. Most if not everyone WILL refuse empathy to a group, it's how the melon works, you can't just be total empathy to everyone, you will always find someone to think "they're faking", "they're lying", "don't be a baby".

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this paragraph is rhetorical and not you lecturing me on how I treat the women in my life, which of course you have no idea about. But first off, your definition of respect is flawed. Respect is not taking the side of that person on every single issue, that's called "treating them like a child". Giving someone the intellectual respect of telling them your real opinion and if they are acting foolishly is the only way of treating someone as an equal. In fact, what you describe is pretty much a textbook definition of "damselling", which is why internet feminists have been given so much grief about being hypocritical recently when they attack the concept of damsels in videogames but call men misogynists when they fail to leap to their defence on an issue.

You have a point about it being more difficult to feel empathy for a group than individuals (that's just human nature), but it's also not really the case here as there are clearly a large number of people feeling TOTAL empathy for those feminists that claim grievance. And to be honest with you, most of what I've read in response to claims of sexism in videogames has deconstructed arguments rather than simply being ad hominem rage.

But the rub is that everyone who feels bad at any point is justified in that feeling and if viewed with respect it will be empathized. So if you think feminists have misconstrued this problem and are wrong, then you are assigning all of that. It is not an independent truth, that truth is that if they feel hurt then they are hurt. That is how empathy works, you filter out people and create hypocritical rules for caring.

This is nonsense. Whether someone is aggrieved or not is one thing, whether or not they are right to be is another. If I were to write a post about how upset I was over the number of men killed in games, I would rightly be told I was making a mountain out of a molehill and that my reaction was disproportionate. The fact is you are abjectly NOT justified in your grievances all the time. When extremist muslims kill people for drawing cartoons of Muhammed, are they justified in their grievances? I don't think so.

So do yourself a favor and believe in the problem they are talking about. Not all problems have solutions, and honestly validating their pain is a great start to shutting them the hell up and fixing the issue. I'm gay, lots of people don't like me or believe that I actually was born this way. If they just respected me and let me get married and everything else everyone else gets, they would NEVER hear from me again. Easiest way to get rid of it is to fix. Soon there will be gay marriage everywhere in the USA and we will never hear about gay marriage again, it will just be in the umbrella of marriage. Is any of this sinking in?

Well in this case you're basically saying that homophobes' grievances that they don't want gay men to marry are invalid, which I completely agree with. But it's sort of a slippery-slope/hypocritical argument coming after what you just said, don't you think? The fact of the matter is that there are two sides to every story, and sometimes one is wrong and sometimes one isn't. Gay rights is generally a settled issue in Western societies, but the degree to which women (and men) are oppressed by gender roles is far from settled. Until it is, people will continue to debate it and try to invalidate each other's positions, even where that position is born of perceived grievance.

Also, being a creative type is not a pass for being terrible. Commedians only get to tell rape jokes if they can understand and subvert the context. EVERY OTHER ONE, the failed ones should result in the full ire of a pissed off mob. It's the pitfall for such an extreme joke. Just because I don't think there should be a ban or rape jokes means it doesn't also mean that anyone can tell any joke. It's all on the table but it is NOT all equal.

No, comedians get to tell rape jokes whenever and wherever the fuck they like. Sure, you can be offended by it, but that's tough shit dude. If you want to live in a free society you better start building up that armour against people saying things that offend you, because I can assure you that alternative is much worse. I'm particularly surprised to hear this coming from a gay person as it wasn't that long ago in the scale of history that mobs would lynch and murder gay people in America. If you think that making a rape joke should result in the same thing then I don't even know where we stand to be honest.

 

[Magmarock]

Absolutely yes.


Over the past five years it seems that games have well, forgotten how to be games. On the right they are trying to be like movies and on the left they are trying to be like art.

I'm all for equality but I'm not convinced. that feminism is going to get us there. There's already a tremendous about of videos on youtuble alone about feminism so I won't go into but I would like to know where all this ?Sexism? was when we were playing Sonic or Earth Worm Jim. In short games should be about GAMES!

and not all this political dramatic nonsense. I'm just sick of it guys.

 

[Dastardly]

You're "not equating" the two but you really do. Because if you use segregation as an example of how most gamers ignore constant feminist complaining about a female character in a bikini (which is only proof of sexual repression within the feminist community and not an indication of sexism), what you're basically saying is that this problem is as obvious and big as segregation which also some people couldn't see why it's a problem. Which is, oh God, so wrong yet so funny.

Read again. No, I'm not equating them. I'm using one as an example of how the other thought process is flawed. I'm not equating the magnitude of the problems. Huge difference.

For instance, someone could compare one country occupying another country by saying, "If someone broke into my house like that, I'd certainly shoot at them until they left." And that person wouldn't be saying that a home invasion is equal in magnitude to a nationwide invasion (or that a nationwide invasion is as small as a home invasion). They are drawing a parallel between certain aspects of the two, which is not the same as stating an equivalence.

The same thought process that led folks to look at half-measures like separate-but-equal and say, "Well, there, ain't that enough?" shares the same flaw with the thought process that says, "Well, there, we had a COUPLE okay female characters, can we shut up about it forever now?" And the current problem calls for a similar (in structure, again, not in magnitude) response: "No, we're not done dealing with this yet, because lasting change has not yet happened."

If you aren't able to see the distinction between comparing and equating, you're being willfully blind in an attempt to make an opposing argument easier to dismiss. There are many points upon which we could disagree, but you're choosing one that simply isn't up for debate.