Jimquisition: Objectification And... Men?

[The Material Sheep]

I think the main issue here is that gaming is going through some growing pains as a medium. It'll get there in time, but ultimately you have to not ascribe some kind of malicious intent to every incidence of a character being overly sexualized. Sexuality exists and the vast majority of human beings are programmed to be interested in it too a pretty high degree. Biological imperatives and all that. So expect art to reflect that, in curvacious scantily clad women, and shirtless hunks with feathered hair and a great smile. The problem really is that games seem to be stuck on a good chunk of portrayal of female characters being sexualized, and that is tedious for a lot of female gamers. As a lesbian, I can get into sexy characters doing their thing, but I also can get miffed at the lack of consistent well rounded portrayals of female characters in video games.

So I suppose what I'm saying is sexualized characters are not bad. Just have more regular female characters.

In regards to male sexualized characters. Ehhh... not as much. Male characters have their own problems of usually being one dimensional bricks, with all the emotional capacity of a teaspoon. However I do think there is likely more game development leeway for male characters to have alternative visual aesthetics, which I'll admit is a problem.

So in the end I suppose Jim is mostly right. I just don't think that "objectification" of male characters is a proper framing of the question. I think a better question is do male characters have more room for diversity than female characters in video games at large.

Just my two cents.

 

[TAdamson]

snip


These are actually interesting points.

1st point: I really don't think the exclusion argument works because
1-Nobody is being excluded from buying or playing anything.
2-Nobody is being actively excluded, game creators/developers are not creating games with a "we don't want women to play this game" mind set.
3-Im pretty sure sales demographics are what drives the pandering of AAA titles.
4-These types of game are not "the only thing provided" but there are very very few other options.

It's not active exclusion though. Women aren't actively excluded from stip clubs either but they don't generally (Not always but most of the time) find them places they want to be.

Now that's an extreme example. But its similar to the passive exclusion that is created by many videogames that results from creating an environment that many women find distasteful.

I had a girlfriend who enjoyed the Soul Calibur series. This is admittedly a pretty sexualised series but at least the were a varied set of female body types. She stopped playing around SC4 because the boobage/upskirting became so blatant that it made her uncomfortable.

Yes the men in that game are similarly ridiculously apportioned but they (except for Voldo) aren't constantly displaying it in a sexualized manner. Imagine if all the male characters were sexualized in way that appealed to homosexual men. The hetero-normative outcry would be absurd.

2nd point: I did not use the term entitled to dismiss an opinion, is not the point of all these discussions to say that people are or should be entitled to stronger female characters? If they feel they are not entitled then there is no problem. If someone says someone should provide them with something then that is entitlement. "They need to provide us with better female characters" = "We are entitled to better female characters" There is nothing wrong with that IMO but economics will trump it every time, so until it is financially beneficial for a private company to provide it, its probably not gonna happen. I do feel there is a huge untapped market there for the right company that knows what they are doing.

I still think that 'entitlement' is a weasely and inappropriate word. 'Want' and 'desire' are better descriptors. Properly 'entitlement' is suggestive of being either deserving or rights or ownership. You have a right to your property or a fair trial. You do not have a right to a free lunch.

Nobody serious is suggesting that we all have the right to dictate the content of commercial or artistic works. Rather that we would like to see more varied examples, especially in regards to female characters. One way of making that more likely is by talking about it.

Unfortunately there is the problem that some in the bro-gaming community (Not you per se but some) see this a threat to the boys club and will try to hose down any discussion of it by calling 'entitlement', dredging up the false comparison of how men and women are depicted, or paleoconservative arguments along the lines of: "it's always been like this so it shouldn't change"

This is frustrating to people who would like to see the medium mature and gain depth. Perhaps move away from the 80s like excess of dumb plots, muscle men and big tits that pervades most of gaming. Not to say that all that should disappear completely but

3rd point: Even if artistic design is being trampled over as you say it is, does that give justification to trample it even further? If a developer/publisher tells an artist to change a character design its probably more contractual than anything, it all depends on who has creative control of an intellectual property. The only way for a consumer to have any say is through free market economics and I fully support that.

Well the question here is the touchy one on whether Triple-AAA games are "Art" or whether they are a commercial product. Like movies there are some games that are 'art' and there are games that contain art but if they were truly art then the amount of focus testing that goes into making big budget titles would not occur and the developer of Remember Me wouldn't be being told to change the gender of the protagonist.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I almost never see, you know, ACTUAL WOMEN complaining about this, and when they do, they always come across as vapid as the objectified characters they complain about.
Every female i spoken with on the issue who isn't a mindless soccer mom has absolutely no problem with it, because they understand it's a fantasy.

Yeah, no real-world objectification of women happening in this post at all.

Because "Soccer Moms" aren't ACTUAL WOMEN for some reason or another. It's a man's job to judge who the real women are.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

I recall having a similar discussion about the portrayal of men vs the portrayal women in popular culture overall. For from objectifying men, this other person seemed to think that men were unfairly stereotyped as fat idiots who were completely dependent on women to save them from themselves. Now I want you to look at these pictures and ask yourself
http://www.bundyology.com/bal2.jpghttp://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oJk4uH5eXdY/TVylPQrTwnI/AAAAAAAAAFw/whLXMmyXaOE/s1600/peggy.jpg
Which standard is harder to live up to?

I imagine based off the pictures and not the show right? Cause I'd rather live in her life then his.

 

[Bashfluff]

The problem with these discussion is that most or people cannot acknowledge that statements like, "There's nothing wrong with a character being there to be attractive," and, "The role of women as a whole in gaming has been shameful," can both be correct.

We can admit to the medium needing to change on the whole without saying that there's something wrong with enjoying a character that only exists for sexual stimulation. All characters are tools to make us feel some emotion or to stimulate us in some way. Jim brought up the habit of the industry to satisfy the male empowerment fantasy using muscular, badass protagonists. But you know what? There's no shame in that. We all go to games for different things. Fantasy is one of the base needs games satisfy. Exploration and discovery! An overwhelming sense of adventure. Falling in love with a story or characters. And sometimes, it's something as simple as a particular emotion.

The erotic is just another tool to make us feel something, to satisfy a basic need. It shouldn't be at the core of your game, but there's nothing wrong with it playing a part. Every tool has its place, and I wouldn't begrudge it that.

But like any tool, we have to know when not to use it. I remember watching an Extra Credits episode about stepping out behind fun. To paraphrase, "Games need to be able to be more than fun. It's not that fun is bad, but that games have more to offer than fun. And the fun games will be even more fun for that."

These basic tropes and designs are fine, sure. This isn't an attack on people who enjoy the way things are now by any means. I enjoy these games. You enjoy these games. I like that you enjoy these games. And there's nothing wrong with that. No one should tell you that, either. Advocates for women make a crucial misstep here. Shaming others for their natural sexual desires is counterproductive and breeds resentment. But with all that said...isn't gaming better when we step out of the bland and repetitive and venture forward into new territory?

Haven't we seen enough masculine heroes trudging forth for blood, beer, and booty? Haven't we seen enough squads of soldiers reenacting WWII using a budget that's probably bigger than WWII was fought with? I am. I'm ready for some fresh ideas and perspectives. I'm not saying that I'm leaving those games in the past; I'm sure I'll play one or two every now and again. I'm saying that I'm done for now. I've had enough of that to last me a little while. I want something new and fresh to bite into.

I understand that many of you aren't ready for that. Many people are just getting into these types of games, or they're used to them, like many of the tropes associated with them, or they just like boobies. Hey, I'm with you. But there's a compromise here, and it's not rooted in watering games down for either side.

We can have both.

Yeah.

We can have games that are focused toward an audience that is much as it is now, where women with big bouncing breasts and hourglass figures, where you play as manly men and have a power trip! I don't judge; it's all cool. I'd like the misogyny to go away (Not the over-reactionary radical feminist kind, but the kind Jim talks about. He's more or less right on that front), but other than that, yeah! I'm all for that.

We can also have games that showcase other things and have a different target audience. There are a plethora of different types of ideas for stories and characters, even if you just look at the variety of roles we haven't seen women protagonists do in games.

Acting like everyone must conform to what you want--on either side--is selfish. I don't want advocates to shame people for wanting a more sexual experience, one that's more tailored to their taste, just as I wouldn't want the male gamers in favor of the status quo to try and yell at women who want games that are more tailored to THEIR tastes just because they're not comfortable with how games are mostly only developed to a core audience of male, sexually repressed 18-20 somethings.


Variety is the spice of life. Diversity leads to games that have different core ideas, characters, and concepts behind them. Having both is okay. After all, aren't games better for it when we're able to look beyond the ordinary and come out with something unique and fresh? This is one big step towards that. We can take it in small increments, celebrating each step while looking toward the future, partners in arms working toward a better industry. We both have something we can give each other in gaming, and that means gifts for everyone.

 

[Mechamorph]

I think a viable solution is to vote with our wallets; one of the very, very few things able to influence the decisions of corporations. If games with strong, female leads who don't look like pin-up models like Chell (Portal, granted its from a first person perspective), Jade (Beyond Good and Evil) or even extremely strong supporting female cast members like Alyx Vance (Half Life 2) sell like hotcakes then maybe we'd see less objectification. Well granted its not a *realistic* solution since such a scenario is unlikely to happen and sexual objectification does sell games so its not going anywhere fast.

The flip side is for female gamers to throw their support behind games pleasing to them. Messir Sterling did point out that only the superhuman adonis like him are generally repesented among gaming protagonists (unless you go way back, Mario, Guybrush, et al are remnants of a different era). However this is not true of all media. Hollywood and, to a much greater extent, Japan's anime and manga have works where male protagonists are objectified and the female heroine is the audience surrogate. These works pull in significant amounts of money. If it works for them, perhaps it can work for us? It may not solve the problem but perhaps more men will be less ignorant of the problem when the shoe is on the other foot. Honestly objectification of women is found in just about every form of media, admitting its a problem is a positive step but this is a problem on the magnitude of a cancer, not an addiction. Just admitting its a problem will not make it go away but then again maudlin harping on it without giving solid solutions can be counterproductive. Perhaps Jim's cerebral genius will present some in the days to come.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

It's where a problem comes in of the self-feeding cycle, it makes no business sense to market toward women because they typically don't buy these games to begin with. And indeed they don't, most women on the internet have no interest in brawlers or fighting games or anything else for that matter.

I agree with you about the self-feeding cycle, that's exactly why things are the way they are.

But it doesn't actually make good business sense. It's the equivalent of a computer company in 1999 saying "Who cares about laptops, smartphones or tablets? We sell heaps of desktop computers!"

Now, we all know what happened to the desktop computer market. It crashed spectacularly, because of the lack of forward-thinking by the companies selling desktop computers. I think the same thing is happening to gaming. Females aren't genetically allergic to games - the only reason for a historical bias toward males in gaming is just that - purely historic. If companies don't wise up and realize that females are just as significant a market, then they will crash and burn just like the desktop computer market did.

Ignoring 50+% of the market just doesn't make any sense. Just like the food industry pretending that only women cook or shop for groceries was a big mistake. Although the food industry seemed to wake up to this fact much more quickly than the videogame industry.

 

[Howling Din]

Women idealized in their appearance is not exclusive to games. Women have been judged by their appearance by far more extreme standards than men since the dawn of civilization. But that doesn't need to be a bad thing.
Consider this, if you have high expectations of someone, that means you think highly of them.

 

[Subscriptism]

Cue the masses claiming, "this isn't a problem, stop talking about it".

There are bigger problems, this doesn't need as much attention as it's getting.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

2nd point: I did not use the term entitled to dismiss an opinion, is not the point of all these discussions to say that people are or should be entitled to stronger female characters? If they feel they are not entitled then there is no problem. If someone says someone should provide them with something then that is entitlement.

No, that is not the case.

I don't recall anybody saying that they are entitled to stronger female characters. People have said that they would like this, but that is not the same as feeling entitled. For example: I might desire a supermodel girlfriend, but by no means does that mean I feel that a supermodel is obligated to be my girlfriend.

 

[Bashfluff]

2nd point: I did not use the term entitled to dismiss an opinion, is not the point of all these discussions to say that people are or should be entitled to stronger female characters? If they feel they are not entitled then there is no problem. If someone says someone should provide them with something then that is entitlement.

No, that is not the case.

I don't recall anybody saying that they are entitled to stronger female characters. People have said that they would like this, but that is not the same as feeling entitled. For example: I might desire a supermodel girlfriend, but by no means does that mean I feel that a supermodel is obligated to be my girlfriend.

If they're not, they should be. We should demand better from our female characters and how they're treated, because they deserve better, and so do we.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

How does the reverse not apply then? Why are men suddenly supposed to feel good about every game displaying idealized versions of their body?

I don't recall anybody making that argument.

You seem to be somewhat uncomfortable with this idea, even though men are generally portrayed as the heroes of videogames. So, maybe you can understand how women feel when they are portrayed not only as not-heroes, but simply as objects of desire with no agency of their own?

Don't you think they could feel just as bad and inferior in the wake of these displays of perfection that women are suddenly taught what men are supposed to be like?

I think you accidentally hit the nail on the head here. Women are more often than not presented as [strong]displays[/strong] in videogames, not as active characters. They tend to serve the purpose of eye-candy.

Meanwhile, most videogame protagonists are male, and they are the ones with power. You're not supposed to ogle them, you are supposed to pretend that you [em]are[/em] them.

Wouldn't it be easier/a better plan if every main character in video games and possibly movies would be fat neckbeards instead, so women lower their standards and start accepting inferior specimen over time?

How about simply doing what Jim suggests, and try to raise female characters to somewhere close to the quality of male characters, rather than just painting them purely as sex/romantic subjects?

How are men supposed to live up to those role models that they are taught to be more like?

They aren't. Men are generally taught that they can be whatever they want to be, and a pretty woman will support them through their troubles.

This is an obvious double standard for everyone not clouded by the stink of feminism and there's no arguing around it.

OK, good luck with that. Arguing that your argument isn't arguable isn't much of an argument.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

If they're not, they should be. We should demand better from our female characters and how they're treated, because they deserve better, and so do we.

Meh, I'm not sure that fictional characters deserve anything in particular, nor do we deserve to have fictional characters written in a particular way for us.

That said, better and more rounded fictional characters would be a nice thing to have in our fictional entertainment.

 

[Celador]

15 pages of people justifying their desires for big boobs and fears of emasculation.

Well done Jim!

 

[Aardvaarkman]

There are bigger problems, this doesn't need as much attention as it's getting.

So, what problems should we be paying attention to? And why are you wasting your time commenting on this thread, rather than dealing with these bigger problems?

 

[Celador]

So, what problems should we be paying attention to? And why are you wasting your time commenting on this thread, rather than dealing with these bigger problems?

Sometimes i think that theres a highly secretive society of misogynistic videogame players which sends out their agents exactly for this purpose - to divert attention elsewhere and derail threads into pointless demagogy about non-existant social studies and prove of unprovable.

 

[wolfyrik]

Cue the masses claiming, "this isn't a problem, stop talking about it".

Thankfully im not one of those however i will say "Lets talk about it but just not repeat ourselves with the same thing so that it doesnt become as much of a discussion and more of a pls-agree-with-me-footrace"

In the sense that, yeah i like that we're having the discussion i just dont like any discussion, discourse and debate to be onesided or to be basically all the people saying the same thing but formulated differently, thats not what debate is to me.

Please post the previous episode where Jim covered the claim of men being objectified-therefor-equal. Cos I missed that one, which is funny since I watch this show every week.

You don't seem to be aware that the nature of debate is to cover each point as it comes up and address each one. These videos on sexism in gaming are essentially a debate, with Jim addressing the main questions forwarded by the opposition. Since live debate isn't happening, post by post debate it has to be. It's also kind of unfair, unlikely and ludicrous to expect Jim to debate these issues with thousands of people at the same time.

You're not interested in addressing this issue? Fine. Don't take part. Go be an attention whore elsewhere.

Meanwhile the rest of us ARE interested in this debate and are very keen on the views of our net journalists. We want to know what people think about it and for many of us it's important because sexism in gaming is a real threat to the industry. Games are quickly becoming the horrendous sausage-fest we've been trying to prevent them being for the last 20 years. I like having female protagonists and I want gaming to be open to both sexes. Partly because I enjoy the fact that my girlfriend is a gamer, partly because I don't want gaming to go back to being seen as something only done by pervy teenage boys and 40 year old male virgins in basements.
For example, if it hadn't been for people like Jim, A:CM would have had an all-male cast. Making a bad game, reprihensable, given the source material.

I'm greatful and relieved that someone is covering these issues and I hope that Jim and others continue to address them. You don't like it? Tough.

 

[Ryan Minns]

Hey look, more people claiming to have the slightest grasp on what an entire gender that's billions strong want...

Why can't people grasp they do NOT represent an entire gender? Claiming you have the SLIGHTEST grasp on what men or women as a whole want is rather silly. You represent yourself and others like yourself at most... being a woman or a man doesn't mean you magically gain the ability to know what everyone else thinks

 

[Fiairflair]

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.

Roger Ebert's confusion of sexuality, sexualisation and objectification offer no justification for telling people to stop objecting to things that matter. Jimquisition is not mandatory viewing. If the theme or the discussion it generates causes offence then the solution is obvious.

Hint: It isn't to tell people to be less sensitive.

Why do these things matter?

AFAIK they don't cause any demonstrable harm, and they can be ignored.

The objectification of men in video games (or lack-there-of) is important because it is cited as justification for ignoring the objectification of women in video games.
I'm starting to sound like a broken record player on these forms, but, since you ask, it matters because no man is an island. Ideas are proliferated by their distribution. If an artist or developer makes material that promotes a certain point of view (and their material is successful) that view spreads. It is important that discussion occurs on what ideas are promoted. Discussion is the mechanism by which individual views are tempered and improved, allowing for greater individual reason.

 

[wolfyrik]

I somehow thing you are overexaggerating the problem if you just compared skimpy armor in a digital medium to slavery.

When did I do that?

I was simply commenting on your interpretation of how various civil rights movements played out. Which was mostly inaccurate. You were the one who brought up such movements in relation to the videogame discussion, not me. I never mentioned skimpy armour at all. You directly stated that gay rights did not progress by people bitching and complaining. I simply disagreed with that specific comment.

Do you not consider gay rights and feminism on par with other civil rights?

None of the progress that has been made in these areas came about by people just shutting up and letting the majority put them in their place. They were hard-fought battles.

What I would give for a 'like' button right now.