Jimquisition: Let's End the FPS Sausage-fest
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
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Like I said, I don't *like* health systems. I prefer sim-combat games to be honest (ARMA's, the original Ghost Recons, OFP's) but in games like Call of Duty or the newer Medal of Honors, that system doesn't really blend with the stylistic and design choices for the levels and story's being told. 1 Hit kills don't work well in corridor shooters. Because of the nature of a corridor shooter, the designer, and thus the player, have to accept somewhat that they *are* going to get hit, no matter how hard they try not to. In open world games (which all the ones I named happen to be) with multiple angles of attack, as well as FAR greater ranges in which to play with, having the element of being killable in 1 hit is acceptable and won't detract from the experience. Look at it like this, in ARMA II, being shot and killed in 1 hit does not aggravate you *nearly* as much as say, if you were killable in 1 hit in COD4.Sylocat said:
Health systems are a necessary evil in order to make the game mechanics of many types of FPS's work. You are, however, mixing apples and oranges here. Health systems (preferences aside) are a mechanic of the game, same as jumping, whether or not you can aim down sights, or sprinting. Having female characters in Special Operations troops is not a mechanic, it's a story element. One that would be as realistic in a Call of Duty or OFP Dragon Rising as a jet pack or anti-gravity lift. It's simply something that doesn't exist. Health meters don't break immersion in corridor shooters. If anything they allow immersion to continue. What would break immersion more? Getting shot once or twice and having to take cover to heal, or being shot once, dieing, and having to repeat a particularly nasty corridor 10 times? The idea of immersion is to *forget* you're playing a game and feel like you're there. Repeating a section because of a mechanical choice breaks immersion far worse than say, a slightly unrealistic mechanic.
Seeing a female Special Operations member would however not only break immersion, but essentially change a games genre from "Modern Setting FPS" to "Fantasy FPS" in the vain of Bioshock. Women do not serve in that capacity. Period. This isn't a thing that can really be debated. It's just a fact. I happened to have served in a unit where the likelihood and amount of combat seen by female soldiers is inordinately high, and it still is by no stretch comparable to what is depicted in the FPS du jour of the month. Like I said in a previous post, you could make a game where a female could be a player character in an FPS, but it would be a VERY boring and tedious FPS 90% of the time and it would lake most of the... well standard things that are expect to be in an FPS of that genre.
I see what your saying there. And I agree with most of what you said.
I'm not convinced though that the inclusion of a playable female character automatically makes the game boring.
As for levels of realism, (if you could call it that in this context), Would you be opposed to female soldiers serving on the front line of a futuristic battlefield, where tech has advanced to the level where cybernetics or other "Upgrades" creates the Warhammer 40K ish Space Marines?
I'm not convinced though that the inclusion of a playable female character automatically makes the game boring.
As for levels of realism, (if you could call it that in this context), Would you be opposed to female soldiers serving on the front line of a futuristic battlefield, where tech has advanced to the level where cybernetics or other "Upgrades" creates the Warhammer 40K ish Space Marines?
First person shooters, as a genre, are really just great big circle-jerks, you see. You can't have female characters because they can't contribute to the cookie.
Careful, Jim: you keep thoughtfully examining gender issues in video games, and I just might develop an unhealthy crush on you.
Two arguments that seem to keep on popping up are getting on my nerves.
First, people are upset about a game series where the player can (and must) use enemy weapons for no reason, are frequently ordered to carry out combat duties that make no damn sense, and ride fucking snowmobiles while firing a machine pistol gansta style...
...not being realistic if it includes female characters? Mmkay.
Second, people might get all up and arms if Call of Duty decides to be controversial. Oh noes! People might hate the new "misogyny simulator!"
Yep, I think they just want to play it safe.
First, people are upset about a game series where the player can (and must) use enemy weapons for no reason, are frequently ordered to carry out combat duties that make no damn sense, and ride fucking snowmobiles while firing a machine pistol gansta style...
...not being realistic if it includes female characters? Mmkay.
Second, people might get all up and arms if Call of Duty decides to be controversial. Oh noes! People might hate the new "misogyny simulator!"
Yep, I think they just want to play it safe.
The point is sexual access. One less thing to pull down/remove. And to the person who asked about why they were chafing his balls, in every pair I have seen, where the crotch isn't is usually stretchy lace (the part that goes between the legs/groin), so the lace rubs against not only your legs and the cleft between legs and groin, but anything hanging down as well. Not fun, not even for women, usually. I have very sensitive skin and can't wear lace of any kind.Sedrine said:
No. Sorry, but no, you don't get to complain about unrealistic story mechanics and then turn around and make excuses for the game design. By your definition, corridor shooters as a whole shouldn't exist, because it is necessary to break from reality in order to enjoy them, and those stylistic and design choices are every bit as much of the story being told as the characters themselves.RC1138 said:
Now, this raises another question: Given that this video referred to FPSs in general, and not just modern military FPSs, why are you so defensive over this one subset of the genre? Or do you have some grander reason for not wanting women in FPSs at all?
I can't stress how much of a mistake Jim did by mentioning women's roles increasing in the military in real life. Not in the marines/frontlines Jim, there's only 1-2 women per 100+ men (if even that). Jim should've done his research. Women have no place in the marine core or frontlines, their bodies are not suited for it and only an extreme minority of exceptions (<1-2%) make it through.
For the few women who do make it through, they face extremely high rates of medical issues, fatigue and trauma while the men are able to withstand it. Women and men are NOT built to be physically equal, men are physically superior, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Women are a liability and can potentially get people killed in critical missions if it involves working for 18 hours a day, their bodies simply can't handle it.
Don't believe me? Take it from a female marine:
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal
Jim should've stuck to videogames and not mentioned real-life at all. You don't need a real-life situation to justify putting women into video games for the sake of keeping the female gamers happy and the feminists' mouths shut. Just put in the damn female models and call it a day developers, so we can put an end to this gender-equality-in-gaming rubbish.
For the few women who do make it through, they face extremely high rates of medical issues, fatigue and trauma while the men are able to withstand it. Women and men are NOT built to be physically equal, men are physically superior, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Women are a liability and can potentially get people killed in critical missions if it involves working for 18 hours a day, their bodies simply can't handle it.
Don't believe me? Take it from a female marine:
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal
Jim should've stuck to videogames and not mentioned real-life at all. You don't need a real-life situation to justify putting women into video games for the sake of keeping the female gamers happy and the feminists' mouths shut. Just put in the damn female models and call it a day developers, so we can put an end to this gender-equality-in-gaming rubbish.
That's one woman. Which, while poking a whole in his Maniverse idea, also sort of proves his point. As far as I recall 'Deadly' was the only female character in a combat role and certainly the only military female I can remember. I can't remember ANY females from the other Call of Duty games.Kitsune Hunter said:
Perhaps I've missed some sarcasm here, but if I haven't...Waffle_Man said:
No Russian.
I don't think they're all that adverse to seeking out controversy.
What a strange idea.TWEWER said:
Why?
A woman trained in the use of a rifle and holding a rifle is no more or less dangerous than a man trained in the use of a rifle and holding a rifle. They're extremely similar in the "shit just got dangerous" category. Why on earth would it be okay to shoot one but not the other?
Because people keep missing the point.
The point is not to ignore real gender issues, the point is to treat *players* equally.
In other words, what makes a game so sacred that a woman paying money for it does not have the right to select a player character she feels comfortable with?
The issue here is not a couple titles that force this situation, but a whole (extremely popular) genre that does so.
Oh, and defenders of realism? For the last time, modern shooters are NOT realistic. Health regenerates, people carry insane amounts of equipment, injuries are always superficial, DEATH is not permanent. We can rationalize all that lack of realism as part of necessary game mechanics. Why can't the presence of female (or multi-racial) characters not be rationalized in the same way? Again, what makes games so sacred that certain people have to feel excluded?
The point is not to ignore real gender issues, the point is to treat *players* equally.
In other words, what makes a game so sacred that a woman paying money for it does not have the right to select a player character she feels comfortable with?
The issue here is not a couple titles that force this situation, but a whole (extremely popular) genre that does so.
Oh, and defenders of realism? For the last time, modern shooters are NOT realistic. Health regenerates, people carry insane amounts of equipment, injuries are always superficial, DEATH is not permanent. We can rationalize all that lack of realism as part of necessary game mechanics. Why can't the presence of female (or multi-racial) characters not be rationalized in the same way? Again, what makes games so sacred that certain people have to feel excluded?
No grander reason then why many veterans are annoyed when they meet COD kiddies trying to explain military operations and protocol to 3 tour veterans, or ARMA-II fans trying to build "Armies" online and somehow believe that makes them experts on warfighting. In the same vain it's as annoying as airsofters going to malls in uniforms *I* wouldn't be allowed to wear in a mall. Perhaps many of you (and I'm not speaking at anyone in particular, rather the culture itself) did not consider this but behaviors and actions like these are probably more offensive to us than the subject at hand of not having women as playable characters.Sylocat said:
It break down like this; you wouldn't, if you actually knew the subject and source material, be offended to *not* see a female Space Marine. Game's Workshop has been pretty clear on the subject and even has, sort of, provided a "version" of them, but a true, Gene-Seed female Space Marine just is never going to be in the picture, the source material just won't allow it. As such screaming out "NO GILES, you can't BE a space marine" probably won't annoy all that much as it would be a rather pointless thing to chime on. In the same vain, it's like a woman holding over a man's head that he can't grow a child inside him. Nice point but it was never on the table in the first place. Pouting over things that just are is futile and waste of energy and, usually, tends to be uncommon.
This however, is not the situation here. Things like what I mentioned *are* offensive to many vets. And it ties into this MUCH grander, and seemingly growing, grotesque misunderstanding any military, especially NATO ones and starting to morph them into these pseudo sci-fi, fantasy organizations that are in reality so detached from the real organizations that they might as well be carrying blasters. The problem is these organizations are real, and exist right now, and it's this... cavalier attitude towards realism that's starting to breed genuine misunderstandings of militaries in general.
An example, imagine if every developer, on their own, but simultaneously, decided to depict in any modern setting FPS that all Middle Easterners (from North Africa to Pakistan) were ruled by communist governments. Did so in every release for years. Now at face value, being said on it's own merits, being a communist government is not a *slight* and doesn't somehow mean you or your government is bad. But, in the same vain, I imagine that would get rather annoying fast from both the blatant misrepresentation and the simple fact that too many people are starting to get facts from video games as if they were textbooks.
The same holds true for military terminology and concepts. Females in a modern setting FPS would be just one more annoying, and a rather blatantly wrong one. As, at least in some cases, many of the misrepresentations of military personnel, behaviors and concepts have SOME grounding in reality, usually of a antithetical military organization from another country, say for example, officers in Special Operations serving as field personnel (almost never happens in NATO counties however is done in numerous Far-East countries). Women in a Special Operations troop has absolutely no grounding in reality whatsoever. I cannot stress this enough, this has never happened. G.I. Jane is as fictitious as Star Wars. It has never happened. And, in all likelihood, won't for many, many decades. Cornucopia technology will likely exist before the technology to allow women to preform on a level necessary for such inclusion exists. So seeing them in an FPS set in modern day would breed just that much more misunderstandings for the source material.
And I'm not against Female player characters in FPS's. In some they actually make more sense than a male. Bioshock comes to mind. Personally, I feel if you switched the genders and kept basically everything else, it makes the moral choices, and thus the overall plot and concepts, that much more profound. Likewise with the main Halo trilogy. Given the MC's behavior, views on humanity and duty thereof, him being a she actually makes more sense. However, if you were to say, switch Soap for a female character, the CoD's would not make much sense. Really switching any player character in any modern warfare CoD's wouldn't make sense and really detract from the story.
And yes you can pick and choose which things are okay. If we didn't, we as a society would have no art, no mediums, and definitely no video games. You have to separate good ideas from bad ideas. There will never be a time where video games don't have to make certain realistic sacrifices in order to remain entertaining. A game that would be 100% realistic would not be entertaining, as that's called reality, and if were playing a game, i.e. an escapist form of entertainment... well you see where I'm going with this. Even if say, virtual reality exists, you'd still have to "cheat" and allow the player say more endurance then they possess in reality. That's a big one in FPS's of all shapes and sizes.
Perhaps most people aren't readily aware, but military equipment, is heavy. And running really sucks in it. And is more or less impossible to do for any great lengths (say, 100 yards or more). Or even better than that, this one makes even SFO's laugh, and that's running a 100 yards in full combat load, and then hitting a bull's eye at 30 yards. That's impossible. SFO's literally spend 1/3 of their time training to do just that and most can't. I know, I trained with them at Quanico. Even a world class runner is going to be breathing hard after sprinting (and you're always sprinting in combat) and you can't be breathing hard if you expect to shoot anything. Or at least hit anything you intended to shoot.
But that doesn't stop people who have never even held a real gun, much less been downrange from telling me how my job works. Nor does it stop you from telling me how organizations work that I was part of for almost 10 years and went to, essentially, the finest school for them in the world.
Actually statistically they're not. At least in any Branch of the U.S. Military. Exceptions do, and will exist, but they would be the statistical anomaly, not the norm. Women score across the board worse on standard marksmanship qualification then male counterparts.Hugga_Bear said:
Personally, I'm of the same opinion regarding women in combat as women in the military in any other position, or women in any other position period -- if they can meet the same standards as the men, then they have every right to be in the same positions. If they can't, they don't. Lowering standards for women then pretending that meeting a lesser standard makes you equal in capability is ridiculous.Tippy said:
I've been told that the position "Women who can meet the same requirements as men deserve the same opportunities, but only if they meet the *same* requirements" is horribly misogynist before, though I haven't quite figured out how.