Jimquisition: Objectification And... Men?

[FFP2]

Yay... this again. Guessing the last video didn't get a lot of views.

Constantly whining about this isn't going to change anything. Unless devs/publishers decide to change. Sales mean more than good characters to them and this whole "sexist" shit is the easiest way to do this. Macho men and women with big boobs are here to stay. They're trying to appeal to the biggest audience - men.

The horror!

 

[Clovus]

This is my idea of an idealized female protagonist:

Spoiler

Ugh, horrible. She doesn't even have boob shaped armor.

I noticed the other day that Dark Souls doesn't include female armor either. I'm guessing they weren't making a political statement though. Either it was cheaper or they just decided that it was idiotic for Havel's armor to change just because a femal was wearing it. Even the armor sets that are female don't look ridiculous, like the Painting Guardian's armor.

There was a recent article (can't link, at work) on Penny Arcade about how boob armor would probably get the person wearing it killed.

 

[Bke]

Well of course only if we objectively assume that objectifying can objectively only exist for one objective purpose to begin with, ie sex appeal in this case.
As in, objectifying is one thing and one definition only and thus can only be applied to females in that sense

But what if we then assume that objectification isnt just about that?

Lovely...

To cut to what I was saying, sans preamble this time:

How do we as the consumers help fix this issue? This is not like licensing or DRM. When a game sells well publishers think this was due to marketing. People bought bioshock infinite regardless of the cover, however I guarantee you the publishers believed that the gun-bro cover actually helped sell the game. So how do we show our desire not to support this practice without missing out on the games we want?

 

[JarinArenos]

Do people really have a problem playing as a female character that is a bit concerning to say the least. And this brings me to something I have been thinking about recently.

You see people argue that "its just a game its not me doing that" and at the same time the same people wont play as a girl as they argue that the character is a projection of themselves. Well you cannot have it both ways. Ether its "just a game " and therefore who you play as should not be a problem for you or the character is a projection of yourself and its you who is using white phosphorus or butchering innocent people in an airport.

And why should every single character you play reflect your sex race and orientation? It would make for a very bland and boring world if all entertainment and art was like that.

I do not think the majority of people think this way, some will do(usually the young male adolescent) however the problem is the publishers thank think that they need to aim everything at this demographic, (publishers you need to get better market research departments seriously).


An example of how stupid this can get ...

Does anyone know of a game where you play as a 27 year old man who is

- slightly overweight
- has a long scruffy ponytail
- who has a beard because they are too lazy to shave


Anyone

Anyone ?

What a shame guess i cannot play any more games then.


see how stupid this can get

I'm not entirely sure what side you're arguing for here, honestly. People should branch out more (more solid female protagonists is a good thing) or things are fine (girls shouldn't complain about playing guys)?

Edit:

When a game sells well publishers think this was due to marketing. People bought bioshock infinite regardless of the cover, however I guarantee you the publishers believed that the gun-bro cover actually helped sell the game. So how do we show our desire not to support this practice without missing out on the games we want?

Exactly like this video. Not letting the topic die. Making the conversation louder so publishers can't help but hear it. Not shutting up just because some people are "tired" of hearing the issue discussed. We'll stop talking about it when the industry changes its practices.

 

[Karadalis]

Superman cant burn his own hair with his laserbeams or freeze them off with his breath. His hair can withstand extreme temperatures and extreme cold perfectly fine. After all he got shot by so many lasers in his career and got frozen so often he should be bald like lex luthor by now.

Nah he would need a cryptonite razorblade to do that.

 

[Rastrelly]

I don't quite get the problem. Yes, there are a lot of female gamers. But what is their demand? What games do they want to play? I have no problems with any girl to play Half-Life or Diablo. But what percentage of female audience wants to play such games? Male and female sectors of game market will be as unequal as cloth or accessory. men tend to dislike wearing skirts or pink. Females (if they are not business women/politicians) would never wear business suits. It's an obvious fact. Nowadays females form giant markets and they in most cases do not correlate to male markets. And gaming is the same thing. The PROBLEM is not objectification or whatever. The problem is actual absence of AAA-class female gaming. That is what to be solved. The industry must start producing those pink shorts/tight jeans/fur coats/jewelry IN ADDITION to modern cowboy hats and boots. That's it.

 

[wizzy555]

Exactly like this video. Not letting the topic die. Making the conversation louder so publishers can't help but hear it. Not shutting up just because some people are "tired" of hearing the issue discussed. We'll stop talking about it when the industry changes its practices.

By making sure Remember me sells well. If you want to support equality, buy remember me.

No I don't work for the company.

 

[Reeve]

So what's wrong with having an idealised person in something that's just a fantasy again? I missed the part where that was demonstrated to have a causative negative effect. What's that? You can't demonstrate the causation? LOL sounds like the violent videogames = violent people bullshit all over again.

 

[Gorrath]

[quote="Karadalis" post="6.407898.17030026

I think the difference here is that an idealized character is still a character.. while an objectivied char... is wank material?

Solid snake for example had big char flaws.. objectified he would not have them.. he would all be "positive" traits.. and therefore very boring.

Or take away the personality of morrigan in Dragon age and she would be nothing more then a pole with tits. But add her personality and suddenly you have a bad ass female char with a somewhat grating personallity... you know.. like most badasses have?

There is a fine line between idealisation and sexualisation... it is crossed when the char is nothing but sexapeal and little else.

As for your other question in how this is bad: Well i guess Miss titsnass goes against the big moralic picture we all should adhere to but secretly enjoying to break all the time if we look at human culture as a whole and especialy the media industry.

Aslong as people buy the product.. the product maker will not make it more "unatractive" for his customers just to stand on the moral high ground.[/quote]

Well that's sort of what I was on about. They are not the same, and I understand that, but if they do cause the same problems then both should be considered valid points of criticism. Saying that male characters aren't objectifed, they're just idealized isn't much of an argument if that idealization leads to many or all of teh exact same issues that objectification does.

We shouldn't hold Miss T&A up as an actual ideal to strive for, but we sure as heck shouldn't hold up Kratos as one either. WHile Kratos has agency and characterization, this idealized version of masculinity is every bit a abhorrent as Miss T&A's version of femininity.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

Your use of forward slashes has totally changed my way of doing things. I'll do a top ten gaming babes next week.

My gf as #1?

Or if it's the digital ones, I vote Garcia Hotspur as #1.

Anyways, I see objectification on both sides. But men don't get it as bad because in games we're portrayed as how we've always wanted to look and act, not how women want us to look and act.

 

[Kuth]

Jim,

I agree that using an apples to apples comparison to sexualizing for male and female roles is true. Males have never been as sexualized compared to Females. The problem I am seeing with your viewpoint over men issues is that you seem to assume that male issues is over being overpostive or a dream standard that most men can not achieve. While that argument itself is not invalid, you fail horribly in finding negative roles for men in gaming.

Men are disposable. The disposablity of men are such a normal thing, that we are just numb at seeing it. In the GCN game 'Geist' there is a part of the game where you kill a soldier near a computer. If you actually read the computer, it will be a letter to his wife on how he will be home. If that letter didn't exist, you wouldn't care that you killed that soldier. You wouldn't care that he died, yet now that you gain the knowledge that you just killed a loving husband, how do you feel? Remorse? Sadness? Regret? All irrelevant.

In video games, you are told to kill waves and waves of men with no back-story, no reasons to exist but to die by your hand. Even NPC's that you work with can be just as disposable. Your comrades may die in the game, and unless he is your best friend, you are not given a reason to care. His existence is to be no more than a cold body on the floor and reinforce your need to kill for vengeance.

A man's life is of lesser value than a woman's life. I highly doubt in the current culture you can debate that idea. Sure you can say both men and women are equal in their value of life, but that's not how video games or any media treats it. If you were given an option to kill 10 men or save 1 woman, what would you choose? Is a woman's life more valuable then those ten men?

I will even go back to just using women as sexual objects. In games, women have a place, but their deaths are something to ponder before chopping their head off. In many games, women are not killed off in some shameless or useless reason to reinforce killing, most of the time their death has a value. You can and will find examples to prove the opposite to what I just said, but most games do not use women's death in the same manner as men.

Jim, the points you have are good but they don't even drill far into the iceberg of sexual roles and negative contexts of those roles.

 

[Ticklefist]

Surprised this needed to be spelled out for some people but if Mr. Ruffled Feathers trying to sweep it under the rug is any indication, it does.

 

[Mahoshonen]

Jim, I have a suggestion: just lock these threads or don't make them. They all invariably descend into furious *****-slapping competitions of who can abuse the shift key the most.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

This is my idea of an idealized female protagonist:

Spoiler

YESSSSS! Can't fucking agree more.

Because unlike most other "strong female protagonists", she actually is aware she is still a woman instead of just being a woman acting in the role of a man and shunning all things womanly.

 

[Dire Sloth]

This is my idea of an idealized female protagonist:

Spoiler

Ugh, horrible. She doesn't even have boob shaped armor.

There was a recent article (can't link, at work) on Penny Arcade about how boob armor would probably get the person wearing it killed.

Ha! And no worries. I'll try hunting it down.

 

[LordMonty]

I like boobs your harsh oposistion of boobs makes me sad! I also feel you that you flaunting of your mighty form makes me sad also. You are cruel as both of these things are currently out of my reach.

P.S Also your shows are amusing and I feel you keep it fresh so screw the detractors and keep on saying whatever the smeg you like.

 

[Psykoma]

But the women are being idealized as well! Who doesn't want an attractive female who depends on her man?

That's still objectifying women - it's framing women as some thing for men to want.

If you had said "what woman doesn't want to be..." you'd have the basis for an idealized character.

But then the character design would have to deal with the issue that so very very few women think having massive boobs with a petite frame is more attractive and preferable, and yet even fewer would think highly of being dependant on her man.

I always felt that the protagonist/hero in an adventure story should most likely reflect what is needed or wanted of him or her. Lara Croft has to have 'sexy' (or in practical terms, developed and strong) abs and legs to make jump after jump and climb ridiculous things. She has to be fit, and to many people fit is sexy, on a very basic level.

I'm sorry, but the "the women have to look like for what they do in the game to be realistically feasible" does not work.

I guarantee you, a woman who could 'realistically' do all that Lara Croft does has 0 boob - all muscle (thighs and butt for that matter as well). A real life woman who can do what Lara Croft does has the same body as Kratos. Well, minus the willy.

Not sure where I am going here, but I assume toned or muscular men must be attractive to some women, or something.

Yes, there are some who do find that attractive.
But the point is that they are incidental to it all, they aren't the target.

 

[Groenteman]

And another fish in a bucket bites the dust! (boomheadshot-criticalhit-itsover9000!!1!!one1)

Not that the internet is not full of fishes in buckets needing some shooting, but this is not one of your videos where your eloquent wording described a problem in a way/from a angle I couldnt find myself.

There are many people on the internet making a stupid argument, no one man can adress them all!

Id also like to add that I personaly dont see the typical male game muscly peabrain protagonist as something to look up at.

As far as I'm concerned, videogames exist to provide a virtual fantasy world. Don't get upset because you don't belong in the target audience of the person providing the fantasy. As for sexual objectification, Roger Ebert sums it up pretty well in his "Hugh Hefner has been good for us" article:

"Nobody taught me to regard women as sex objects. I always did. Most men do. And truth to tell, most women regard men as sex objects. We regard many other aspects of another person, but sex is the elephant in the room. Evolution has hard-wired us that way. When we meet a new person, in some small recess of our minds we evaluate that person as a sex partner. We don't act on it, we don't dwell on it, but we do it. You know we do. And this process continues bravely until we are old and feeble."

Now please, stop being so goddamn sensitive.

THIS...

Please, stop being so critical of a medium because it is not serving to the demographic of your choice. Do you see men whining about the romantic novels only catering to female readers??

Ever wondered why the talk about sexism is only happening now, and not 10-15 years go?? Thats because women are only entering the industry now. Gaming was beneath them, or unavailable to them or, or they were not allowed to play games by patriarchal society, and only now they are being accepted as a hobby by females. They are new. And as much as you claim they are the 47% of the demographic, they are NOT.

Well, they are unless you start counting the occasional angry bird gamers or browser gamers. Come to think of it, my mom is a gamer too[since she plays spider solitaire]. I wonder if she'd want to play Assassins Creed 4 when it comes out.

I think the bigger issue here is not the 'regarding as', but 'treating as'. You are expected to be able to keep your junk in your pants and treat people with some basic respect, not blindly hobble after base insticts. Even monkeys can do it.

Same goes for popular media. Sure theres a place for DoA and Gears of War, just like in movies theres a place for porn and cheesy action flicks, books have place for erotic novels and whatnot, etc etc. This does not mean we want a whole bloody medium to be just porn and muscly peabrains (and those who do want that, why the hell are you complaining? there not every going to be a shortage of those)

Also romance novels are a genre, not a medium. Gaming is a medium, shooters are a genre. 'male-centric' is not even an essential part of shooters. Try and think a bit harder about your analogies.