Jimquisition: Creative Freedom, Strings Attached

[Tanneseph]

Amen on the vid.

Can someone clue me in on why he uses the picture of the shrimp (and now lobsters?) often? I feel like I'm missing something super obvious, and it drives me nuts every week!

 

[Lilani]

Edit: What I'm saying is that if Half-Life 2 is played by someone identifying as female, Gordon Freeman is female in that case. If played by someone idenifying as male, Gordon is male.

As a female, I've got to say...not really. This isn't how it works at all. I don't know what it feels like to "be" a man, but I still felt like Gordon Freeman playing HL2 and I was perfectly fine with everyone else calling me a male, and with Alyx hitting on me every now and then. And when I was playing the Walking Dead I didn't feel like a female Lee, I felt like Lee. I made my decisions based on my perceptions of his character. I wanted him to fall in love with Carly, and I encouraged him to be fatherly to Clementine. As I saw his relationship with Clementine develop, it felt like a father-daughter relationship, not a mother-daughter. And I loved that--I just loved the honesty and tenderness there. It reminded me of my dad in many ways.

To say it's impossible for a player to play as the opposite gender without "imagining" they're the same gender is like saying a person can't watch a movie or read a book about a character of the opposite gender without mentally changing them to be the same. That just isn't how it works at all. Perhaps if the character is nameless and there's no narrative like Minecraft or something, but if the character has a name and if they're an active participant in the narrative then that defines them. All throughout Bioshock I was aware I was playing a man, and I felt no need to change that. I was too busy exploring the narrative and seeing where the characters and story were going to go. It's just the same as the way I got through Harry Potter just fine without turning him into Harriet Potter in my mind. It's the same principle, really.

 

[Lilani]

There's no hermaphrodite gender, as a person is either male or female (there's a huge number of scientific studies on children with both genitals which proves that there's no third gender, they children are always male or female).

Intersex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex] people exist, and roughly 1.7% of human births are intersex. While it may not be a "third gender" per se, but some countries have adopted "X" as a valid alternative to "M" or "F" for these people who are biologically neither male nor female.

Gender isn't cultural because gender roles are the same in all cultures. Women prefer roles that are people orientated, while men prefer STEM subjects. If gender could change hourly then you'd have women who had spent 30 years as a nurse suddenly wanting to become an engineer and vice versa.

There is a whole discussion we can have here about implied gender roles; the way children are exposed to toys which in some ways "tell" them what they should like, and what effects this can have on what activities they pursue in the future. For example, boys are typically surrounded by building and construction toys, while girls are typically surrounded by dolls and domestically-related toys, and media constantly tells them these are the things they want. They're told before they can even comprehend any of it that girls like baby dolls and boys like trucks. I think we need to look very carefully at all this before we decide any of these are "inherent" traits.

Finally male and female traits are common in all cultures. That's why there's no human cultures where the women hunt and the men raise children.

Though many matriarchies [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy#History] have existed and continue to exist today. Again, you're simply taking the traits of your culture and assuming that not only are they universal, but also that they are "correct." Ethnocentrism is never helpful in a discussion like this, and if you want to argue facts then I think you need to brush up on a few more before coming back here.

Also take the idiot quip out of the beginning of your post, lest the mods incur their wrath. There's no need for name calling.

 

[carnex]

Hmm, seriously one of the better episodes. But my which is that he went just one step further. Just one more mention. And that is thus:

Invoking social justice in your criticism is not criticism of work, it's criticism of author based on his work. Invoking social justice is not just criticism, it's specifying something as objectively bad or even harmful, it?s invoking need for censorship. Therefore you can call something offensive, but not harmful or socially unacceptable. No matter how socially unacceptable games is it has right to exist.

 

[RJ 17]

Personally, I prefer playing as a female in games where gender is an option purely because I enjoy the thought of a strong female character being the hero. I like the thought that Shepard is a bad-ass woman saving the galaxy rather than a typical male space marine.

That said, I'm not going to ignore a game if gender isn't an option. Good game = good game. No need to get all picky about it. As Jim said, it's "fair enough" to question WHY the creator of a game might have been so emphatic that the main character be one gender or the other, but in the end I'll still play the game if it looks fun/interesting/entertaining/etc.

 

[Goliath100]

snip

You do get that it's the characters that change, not you? And it only apply to playable characters?

 

[Erttheking]

Why should a game be criticised or scrutinised simply because it doesn't have a female protagonist?

Why shouldn't it?

Well it does make it harder for developers to make the game they want when people are criticising it simply because it doesn't meet a gender quota. I have no doubt that many female characters and minorities were added to games simply to appease the white knights, rather than to enhance the story.

First of all, White Knight is getting to be an old term. Second of all, yes it's true that female and minority characters don't always enhance the story to a game. The problem is that male characters don't always enhance it either, but it doesn't stop the flood of them. No one is asking for a gender quota. We're asking for people to step out of their safe zones and to make a character besides a white brown haired white man in his mid 30s. SOME of them are good, but 90% of them kinda suck.

Most of the bad games with a brown haired, white man, in his mid 30s sucked because the story was boring or the gameplay was bad; so a different main character won't fix these problem.

The character has very little influence on the story; which is why no one ever says that a game would been better if the protagonist had been blond, black, a woman, or a child.

But this kind of raises the question of if these characters are so unimportant to the story, why can't they be something else? I mean clearly their identity isn't really that important. It's like Jim said. "Why a guy?"

 

[Lilani]

snip

You do get that it's the characters that change, not you? And it only apply to playable characters?

The way I understand what you're saying is this: When a female is playing Gordon Freeman, she imagines him as a female instead of a male, or when a male is playing Lara Croft he imagines Lara as a male. I'm saying this is wrong, because I've played many games fully aware that the character I control is a male when I am not a male. Again, the only time I've done otherwise is when the character lacks both a name and a role within a set narrative, like Minecraft.

 

[orangeapples]

Leave it to a Brit to tell Americans what the First Amendment actually means >_>

 

[Goliath100]

snip

You do get that it's the characters that change, not you? And it only apply to playable characters?

The way I understand what you're saying is this: When a female is playing Gordon Freeman, she imagines him as a female instead of a male, or when a male is playing Lara Croft he imagines Lara as a male. I'm saying this is wrong, because I've played many games fully aware that the character I control is a male when I am not a male. Again, the only time I've done otherwise is when the character lacks both a name and a role within a set narrative, like Minecraft.

You do get that's completely wrong? And I don't even get where you got that from?

 

[Catrixa]

From reading a few of the comments here, I think I've found the problem with this whole debacle:

Saying something does not properly represent women is not an excuse to jump to conclusions. For anyone (developers, gamers, publishers, Christian moms, feminists, farmers, WalMart slaves, etc.). The phrase "GTA V does not properly represent women, because it does not allow one as a protagonist," is an almost meaningless statement if there's no actual, concrete, definitive meaning for "represent women" (which, last I checked, there isn't). If there's no concrete definition of something (as in, it is not a fact, like "the atmosphere is blue when light from the sun hits it"), it's probably an opinion. You are free to not share an opinion. Personally, I don't necessarily think having a male-only protagonist prevents a game from "properly" representing women, but it can help.

If you are watching/reading/consuming any media, hear the words "does not represent women" and conclude, in order: This thing is Sexist->Sexist is hating women (misogynist)->Misogyny is an attribute of a fundamentally bad person->Creators of misogynist things are fundamentally bad people->Consuming things that are misogynist makes me a fundamentally bad person, stop. If someone says you are a fundamentally bad person for liking something they consider sexist, ask them to cite sources saying the material in question causes personality changes.

We all like something that someone has deemed "bad," "offensive," "juvenile," etc. Maybe it's because we're bad people. Maybe it isn't (you can appreciate an offensive joke without constantly offending the person/group the joke is about). Most of the "sexist" material being produced today is done from ignorance, not deliberate malice. This ignorance should be corrected. That is what calling something sexist, not representing women, etc. is trying to do. If you feel this threatens your worldview and should not be questioned, you have not yet found your own solidarity on this topic, and should challenge yourself to think about these things. Not every claim of "this is sexist!" will be right, but don't just dismiss them because it's easy.

 

[Lilani]

You do get that's completely wrong? And I don't even get where you got that from?

I got it from the very words you said on the first page of this thread.

To throw a wrench into this...

It's impossible for a playble character (when playable) to have a gender other than the players. The player is part of the playable character, and the physical absolutes that defines the genders are impossible to measure on virtual character. Than logic follows that what the player identify as define the gender of the playable character.

Edit: What I'm saying is that if Half-Life 2 is played by someone identifying as female, Gordon Freeman is female in that case. If played by someone idenifying as male, Gordon is male.

Those last two sentences say it plain as day. "When Half-Life 2 is played by someone identifying as female, Gordon Freeman is female in that case." In my experience, no he was not, he was still a male to me. If that wasn't what you were trying to say, then please explain.

 

[Bostur]

No other media even puts itself up for these kinds of demands. Movies, books, art, the audience sees these after the fact and are only upset when they're based on some other work and unwarranted changes are made. I understand the defense of the question being able to be asked, but I don't think it's a very good one. Would we ask why Lucky Number Slevin cast a male lead or why Harry Potter was male? No, it's part of the writer's story and is meant as such.

The demand of a media to be customized around us is unrealistic in most places and I think it can really be unrealistic in some narrative driven games. Asking why Nathan Drake can't be a woman and demanding it even would be silly. The question can absolutely be asked but it's not wholly unlike demanding Picasso to put a little bit of red in those blue period paintings of his because some people like red and would rather see it.

I like the idea of games increasingly including females as an option to play as. I don't care what other people choose when I'm given a choice. But pressuring writers to alter their vision is a wrong in my opinion.

I had some of the same thoughts. Games do allow for an audience that is more involved in the process though, and that can explain why we have more specific expectations. Games also get updated after release, and many are even published in the beta phase, something that is quite unique for games and other software. So this extra involvement and the expectations that follows does make more sense.

However I do get worried when art is criticized based on its political qualities rather than its artistic qualities. If a piece of art has a political agenda its fine to criticize it politically, it is the subject matter after all. But basing aestethic criticism on political arguments feels out of place. The '70s was had some grave examples where everything was expected to be political, and a lot of art suffered for it.

Games do have a blurry line between artistic freedom and involving the audience. Game designers shouldn't be completely isolated in an ivory tower, but gamers shouldn't put too much pressure on the process of creation either.

 

[Lightknight]

If I could offer an alternate suggestion: I think that the greater reason why there aren't as many female protagonists is because most game designers are males. Maybe this is self-perpetuating--males know how to write male protagonists, so not as many women get into gaming to become developers--but I don't think that's really the "fault" of games themselves.

The vast majority of AAA gamers are male. The current ESA study that puts the male/female ratio at 53%/47% not only fails to divide them by console/pc/mobile dive and game genre, but the study so loosely describes "gamer" that it includes more than half of the respondants who did not plan to buy even one game in 2012. That means that over half of that study isn't the target audience of AAA developers.

Now then, if you go to the previous study that was 60%/40% (male/female) just a few years ago, we also saw that 80% of female console gamers owned a Wii as their primary console. This means that the vast majority of AAA console titles saw a sea of more than 80% of males in their target demographic for both the ps3 and 360. There is no evidence to say that this distribution has necessarily changed. Especially now that the ESA opened up iOS into the study. To make matters even more confusing, we don't even know if the game genres preferred by both genders are the same. For example, males may lean signicicantly towards FPS titles while females may prefer something else in different proportions. Like RTS games.

The Puppeteer character is VERY animated and the game is highly narrated (saying fancy and troublesome words like "boy"). You're talking about spending what could be significant resources just to let someone play with a slightly diffently dressed hero. On the face of it, you're demanding that an artist redo his work.

And to what purpose? Why edit your work like that? It's the story of a boy hero, why isn't that enough? Should movie studios have two versions of movies they put out where they just switch out the lead according to what the person wants? Should digital copies of books automatically neuter pronouns and replace the name and gender of the protagonist (sounds like a money making application...)? No. That's not the storyteller's burden. It just isn't. So seriously, if the gender of a protagonist is that important to the person, they just shouldn't buy the game. Like the guy said. The debate isn't ethics or some such lofty goal.

It's a subjective matter. "Why isn't the sky poop brown," they asked the sky's creator in the game? Is it a valid question? Sure. Should it be allowed to be asked? Yeah. Is it a good question? No. It's that way because someone made it that way. Because someone wrote a story and defined the characters. I get that there are people who can't handle that. But there are a ton of games coming out now with entirely customizeable characters. There have been for years (I remember playing through Resident Evil a few times for example). Why should every game conform?

 

[Erttheking]

Most of the bad games with a brown haired, white man, in his mid 30s sucked because the story was boring or the gameplay was bad; so a different main character won't fix these problem.

The character has very little influence on the story; which is why no one ever says that a game would been better if the protagonist had been blond, black, a woman, or a child.

But this kind of raises the question of if these characters are so unimportant to the story, why can't they be something else? I mean clearly their identity isn't really that important. It's like Jim said. "Why a guy?"

Because it's what the developer wanted to write a story about. They don't need any more justification than this.

Yeah they don't NEED any more justification than that, but don't expect me to keep my mouth shut about the countless games with brown haired mid 30s white guys and how freaking boring and unoriginal they are.

 

[Lilani]

"GTA V does not properly represent women, because it does not allow one as a protagonist," is an almost meaningless statement if there's no actual, concrete, definitive meaning for "represent women" (which, last I checked, there isn't). If there's no concrete definition of something (as in, it is not a fact, like "the atmosphere is blue when light from the sun hits it"), it's probably an opinion. You are free to not share an opinion. Personally, I don't necessarily think having a male-only protagonist prevents a game from "properly" representing women, but it can help.

I don't think anybody is asking for GTA V to "represent" women in some way, as much as nobody thinks GTA V in its current state "represents" men in some way. It just seems like a stroke of thoughtlessness. FPS's are filled to the brim with 30-40 something white dudes, so why bother making three different playable characters if you're going to make them ALL 30-40 something white dudes? Variety is the spice of life, after all. I mean, with the way so many shows and such like to shoehorn in the "token woman" or "token black guy" just so they don't get in trouble for forgetting non-white people exist, it almost would have taken some effort for them to make their entire cast white and male.

I have a friend who I've known since middle school. She's a bit shy, but when you get to know her she'll talk your ear off. She fought with clinical depression for a long time, and I've talked her out of suicide more than once. But recently she's gotten on the right medication and found the right therapist, and she's doing great. She's acing her college classes, she's on a first-name basis with the head of her department, she's about to graduate with a bachelor's in psychology and she'll be moving right on to get her master's degree, and she's spending a lot of time volunteering at our local hospital. She's been chosen as volunteer of the month like three times now, and she's on a first-name basis with some of the higher-ups in the hospital.

And there's something else I noticed about her only just recently. She's Mexican. Well, half-Mexican, but her hair and skin color are definitely of hispanic origin. I've known her for like 10 years now and I only recently put a significant amount of thought into it. As a kid I never thought about it, I had to grow into an adult and just happened to be thinking about non-white people I know due to another conversation on these boards. It almost felt like an epiphany, in a way.

So again, nobody's looking for somebody to "represent" women, as much as my friend doesn't "represent" Mexicans to me. We just want some variety. Plus, the whole whitewashing thing is a bit reminiscent of a time not long ago when non-white people were deliberately excluded from media because they weren't white, which still makes many uncomfortable or at least dubious (I know it makes me a bit curious as to why).

 

[nightazday]

Well both parties were in the right. Gaming as a whole needs more female protagonist, but if you add one just to satisfy a quota you'll just get tolkienism.

 

[Goliath100]

Those last two sentences say it plain as day. "When Half-Life 2 is played by someone identifying as female, Gordon Freeman is female in that case." In my experience, no he was not, he was still a male to me. If that wasn't what you were trying to say, then please explain.

1) Gordon Freeman IS a non entity (as a character), how can you feel one way or another?
2) This concept has never been presented for you before (I guess), so you have no grounds say that Gordon "male", because the idea of Gordon being female never enterd your mind.
3)How anyone "feels" about this changes nothing.
4)Actions define characters, player define action of playable character, therefore player defines playable character. In other words: The player is part of character's psyche. Psyche defines one's gender. Therefore, playable character changes after player's gender.

 

[Mahoshonen]

Okay, let me give my two cents: There is nothing wrong deciding to go with a male character instead of a female character. Take a film like Glengary Glen Ross. The story and themes are such that replacing any of the characters with a woman would fundamentally change them. The film is inheritely about masculinity, and replacing an actor with an actress would have changed the movies chemistry.

That said, a developer should be able to articulate why they made the character selections they did. It shouldn't be a thoughtless choice, and if they act defensively when the question is presented, it's only going to invite more criticism. That's because avoiding the discussion is seen as evidence that you don't have a good reason for the choice you made, fairly or not.

These conversations are not going away. I thinks folks would be satisfied if Rockstar came forward with why they went with male-only PCs. They don't even have to spoil anything, just say 'given the story we want to tell, we feel that a female lead wouldn't be appropriate. Once the game is released we'd be happy to discuss this further.' Attempting to bury conversation with the broad brush of 'censorship' will only embolden the other side to continue to press the issue.

 

[MB202]

I find this snippy response to be rather unwarranted to an otherwise simple question. I'd like the option there, unless the game absolutely REQUIRES that the main character (who in this case, is just a puppet) has to be male. After all, what's the harm in just including the option, ESPECIALLY if the gender doesn't affect the game itself. See, trying to be more inclusive is not the same as "pandering" to certain "demographics".