Jimquisition: Vertigo

[themilo504]

The entire cast of touhou fits jims criteria, going by the horrible art the characters aren?t attractive, their motivations if they have any are unique and have nothing to do with men since they don?t exist in those games, their personalities makes you want to hit them with a steel pipe yes but there still personalities, and finally there in a bullet hell game so they certainly have both power and strength.

There are also certain female rulers in crusader kings 2 that fit jims criteria but those might fall under player created, they can be quite unattractive, they can have a very interesting combination of personalities traits, their motivations typically have to do with keeping and\or gaining more power, admittedly unlike male characters they can?t fight as generals (unless you mod the game) but they can still take over the world and\or have very high martial skill.

 

[Tombsite]

Fuck your PC bullshit. Annoying as fuck, it's like MovieBob praising Antita Scamiisian.

Why is him making this video a problem for you? (I am really curious here).Also why is this the same as "MovieBob praising Anita Sarkeesian"?

 

[the Dept of Science]

This reminded me of the Bechdel Test, but made easier to pass and then failed by pretty much everyone.

 

[l3o2828]

I was thinking, Does Izanami count?

She's not exactly...pretty, and she's a villain and all.

 

[Steve2911]

Fuck your PC bullshit. Annoying as fuck, it's like MovieBob praising Antita Scamiisian.

Why even post if you hold such ancient views? What is your problem?

Srsly? Ancient views? You are dillusional my child, go out and se what actually happens. I am all for people proving themselves and yada yada but this PC talk is bullshit. It's like in schools they talk about "reporting cyber-bullying" or "passive fighting", this shit is not real - deal with your problems yourself.

You are talking absolute fucking nonsense.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Oh not this crap again.

I swear, Garme Jernolists are more predictable than the fucking tide.

We get it, there aren't as many female protagonists in games as there are men. The question is, who besides the histrionic SJW's of the world even care?

You say men aren't as conventionally attractive, and I have to ask, do you even know what women look for in men? What seems like a pile of grizzled manliness to us could be a steaming pile of attractive man-meat to a female.

Men and women have differing standards of attractiveness, and attempts to compare the two as if they were the same comes off as ignorant.

 

[88chaz88]

3) American McGee's Alice. Yeah, that sexy bod of hers, ya all recall?

Definitely conventionally attractive, why would you even argue that?

4) Faith from Mirror's Edge, who can be considered attractive by some, but faaaar from being sexy doll

Again, conventionally attractive.

5) Kate Walker, someone? There were a lot of people going into onanistic rage because of that chick?

Yet again... wait I see the pattern here.

What Jim used, the exact words he used, was "conventionally attractive". Basically this means that most people would consider them pretty to look at, or at least not ugly. I wouldn't even say that Kerrigan doesn't fit the bill, she still looks pretty even after zergification.

 

[Erttheking]

If looks doesnt matter, why cant women be "attractive" so to speak?
Why is the concept of Saints Row and other types of games such as MMOs completely discarded because theyre our creation not the developers?
Can then only good female characters exist if they're created by the developer and not the player?

They can, Jim doesn't have a problem with that. The problem is that apparently they can't be anything else than attractive. That is a problem.

Thats up for debate however and not an objective fact, especially if you just consider that to be the one part that matters to a player, regardless if its being marketed to you as such. Its a woman, shes attractive.
I like to compare this debate to the new steam controller rage:

oh my god look how bad this controller looks it must be shit.

While im thinking instead: I wonder what it feels like to use it for play though since i will use my controller for a game and not to look at.

Look you can split hairs as much as you want, but it's pretty hard to deny that a massive majority of female characters are designed with the intention of people trying to make them look good in mind. And a good looking character isn't a bad thing, a lot of people really like Mitsuru from Persona 3 and she's hardly lacking, but good looking for female is become ing what "White, brown haired thirty something" is for male. There is nothing wrong with a character like that but the sheer number of them is ridiculous and something ELSE would be nice.

Truth=/=Urgency

While its debatably somewhat true, the impact it has or the urgency of said subject isnt objectively problematic in itself, because again i must ask the question in that case: Does the opposite matter/not matter, and if so, why/why not?

I havent denied anything but neither am i so gullible to simply accept a black and white scenario without contrast.
First of all the fallacy that appearently then according to most arguments vs this, is well, we get a "non-traditionally attractive female protagonist" and then to break it down first of all. Well what constitutes one ideal over another, as you must be aware both male and female gamers find some "non-traditionally attractive males" to be appealing in games. The other problem comes with ambiguous genders and well, if it is a female but we cant tell, is it a female? If a tree falls in the forest without anyone around to hear it does it still make a noise, basically?
Then the third question of course becomes, protagonist, according to me? you? what about anti-heroes then or npcs or other characters in a game that have equal amount of impact on the game as you the player does?

First of all, yeah we have been getting some non-attractive males in gaming. I'd like to see someone flat out say that they think that Kratos is attractive. Come to think of it we have a lot of butt ugly guys in gaming. Marcus Fenix, Geralt of Rivia, Kratos as I mentioned before and that bloke from Asura's wrath. And yes ideals vary from person to person, I personally think that manly women are very attractive, but that's not the point. Here is one image of wolverine.

http://www.eastside-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wolverine1.jpg

And here is another

http://wallpaper-share.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/the-wolverine-handsome-wallpaper-1024x576.jpg

It's pretty obvious which one had the intention of being attractive in it and while some people may find the second one ugly and some of them may find the first one attractive, that's not the point, it's about the intent, and intent is very obvious.

...What does that have to do with anything?

A protagonists in a video game is the character you play as, the main character that the story revolves around. End of story. Dom is not the protagonist of Gears of War, the Arbiter isn't the main character of Halo 2 even though he is playable, he is the deuteragonist, Clementine is not the protagonist of the Walking Dead, Elizabeth is not the protagonist of Bioshock Infinite, Ellie is not hte protagonist of the Last of Us.

So then what the creator intends nullifies all opinions on what people believe, what they think and what they interpret?
Hmmn ok then..i guess...

Well by that definition kane and lynch are protagonists, walter white is a protagonist, and hitler was the protagonist of ww2, but of course, how could i have been so foolish to think otherwise haha.

Again, you may find someday that what is true isnt important or urgent, its trivial at best and hey, if we can get more people who dont spend their time complaining and instead actually helping in their selected category or artistic medium then all the better, but if they dont then thats not exactly the end of the world either.
If a good games comes along with a nontraditionally attractive female protagonist then i would like said game to be praised for how good the game part actually is, not how the protagonist looks or doesnt look, thats all im saying anyway. Id like to enjoy games for..yknow, being games, but i guess thats too much to ask for some people i suppose :L

Um, yeah kinda. If a creator flat out creates a work with the intention of insulting all Asians everywhere, you can't really argue that his work isn't racist. If it has buck toothed yellow skinned Asians, author intent really wins out over personal interpretation. You can have your views on it, but author intent matters a lot.

Walter White and Jane and Lynch are protagonists...YES! THEY ARE! Did anyone ever claim otherwise!? The protagonist is the leading character in a story and the antagonist is the character who opposes him. At no point was it ever stated that the protagonist had to be a good guy or the antagonist a bad guy!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroAntagonist

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist

Also, no Hilter was not the protagonist of WW II because WW II was a real life event and not a story and didn't have a protagonist.

...You're putting a lot of words in my mouth here. Do you honestly think I would cheer if a female character was ugly just because of that alone? No I wouldn't. Briene of Tarth isn't well liked just because she's not a beauty queen, she's loved because she's a well rounded character and has an interesting relationship with Jaime. Remember Me had a female characted but people weren't jumping all over it saying "Female character! Love it!" because it had problems.

Also it's not the end of the world if this problem doesn't get solved...so? It's a problem I care about because it represents stagnation in gaming, and I am tired of games churning out the same bland character over and over again and I want story telling in gaming to evolve because I care deeply about story telling and gaming. It's not a big problem but it's still a problem. That statement of yours just feels like the Children Starving in Africa argument. And you're tired of people complaining? Well, here's the thing. Complaining gets results. People complained about the X-COM shooter, they got X-COM Enemy Unknown, people complained about the lack of a Dark Souls PC port, they got one, people complained about the Mass Effect 3 ending, they got the extended cut, people complained about the Xbox One, Microsoft reversed half of their policies, people complained about SOPA way back when, it got killed. Don't criticize people for complaining. It isn't just pointless whining. It gets results because any developer worth their salt listens. As for helping...what would you have us do? Most people aren't in a position to fund their own games and the "Let's see you do better argument" just infuriates me. What? Am I not allowed to criticize movies until I make a movie of my own?

 

[Ukomba]

Hmm, well here's a list of characters I think meet that criteria:

Amazon in Dragon's Crown.
Lucca from Chrono Trigger.
Okami from Okami.
Peacock from skull girls.
Double from skull girls.
Macha from Chrono Cross.
NeoFio from Chrono Cross.
Poshul from Chrono Cross.
Sprigg from Chrono Cross.
Shale from Dragon Age.
Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2.
Bombette from Paper Mario.
Lady Bow from Paper Mario.
Watt from Paper Mario.
Sushie from Paper Mario.
Goombella from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Flurrie from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Ms. Mowz from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Toadette from Mario Kart.
Birdo from Mario Kart.
Baby Daisy from Mario Kart.

That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head from games I've played.

Amazon - Sexualized, impractical outfit. While not "traditionally" attractive from a mainstream attraction, she definitely fits within fetishistic character design tropes popular in certain niches within Japanese entertainment. She may not be everyone's cup of tea, but trust me, she's designed for sex appeal. Plus none of the characters in that game have interesting or unique character motivations or identities, so even if you could argue that she isn't designed with sex appeal in mind, she fails to meet Jim's criteria for that reason as well (though at least the male characters in the game are equally as uninteresting and under-developed).
Lucca - A supporting character, not a protagonist. Jim was specifically looking for playable protagonists.
Okami - The character is actually named Amaterasu, but I'd say that's probably a fair example that Jim may have overlooked.
Peacock - Her motivations center around being used as a test subject, which Jim would justifiably qualify as "power from trauma".
Double - See above.
Macha/NeoFio/Poshul/Sprigg - Not protagonists.
Shale - A DLC character and not a protagonist.
Kreia - Not a protagonist.

One example I thought of that Jim may have overlooked is Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie, who could be argued as a supporting character, but I'd argue that she's the more active participant in the duo, particular in regards to gameplay, though obviously she has less at stake in terms of plot since it's not her sister that's been kidnapped. But it does seem a bit silly that we have to keep looking at non-humanoids to find valid examples.

And it may seem like splitting hairs for discounting many of your characters for not being protagonists, but part of the issue is that women would like to be able to directly identify with the character they has the most agency and direct focus within the story. They may like to see well-crafted female supporting characters, but when it's all they have, it starts to make them feel ignored, marginalized, and underestimated. It seems like there's an underlying hesitance to make a woman the central protagonist either due to concerns regarding whether or not their young male demographic would enjoy playing as a female character they don't find attractive, as though we would be afraid of identifying with a woman. As a dude, I find that assumption pretty demeaning. I don't need to find a female character sexy to want to play as her and I don't need to play as a male character to identify with the protagonist. I think game publishers need to stop overthinking it so much.

For starters, look up the definition of 'protagonist'. Here let me help:

protagonist: the leading character or one of the major characters in a drama, movie, novel, or other fictional text.

So Kreia, Macha, NeoFio, Poshul, Sprigg, Lucca, and Shale are, in fact, Protagonists. Any Party member would be. Even non playable characters, like Joker from Mass Effect, would count as a Protagonist. Lucca especially, since Chrono dies half way through the game. Is there just no Protagonist at that point?

A character being DLC is entirely irrelevant.

The Trauma thing, well you might have me for those two.

 

[the Dept of Science]

Would broodmother count? Giant spider in Dota 2? She wants to kill all the heroes of the world to stop them trampling her baby spiders.

Except that protecting her large brood of babies can be as problematic a motivation as doing it for a man.

 

[deathjavu]

Is anyone else having trouble figuring out what Monxeroth's argument actually is? It's all English and yet somehow perfectly unintelligible. Is the basic point that it doesn't matter that there's so little variety in Women characters?

Also, the argument about catering to current demographics is dumb on many levels. I made a flippant joke earlier, but let me break it down further:

a) Catering just to the current demographics is a dipshit way of doing business on many levels.

-All businesses should be looking to expand their demographics to increase both profits and long term survivability.

-Creating games for the same demographic (at present, teenage and college age boys) leads to the creation of the same games over and over again, which results in repetitive, boring, and uninteresting games such as the millions of COD clones stanking up the market.

-Everyone competing for the same market leads to market oversaturation, resulting in humiliating multimillion dollar flops such as whatever Medal of Honor game EA has shit out most recently (I don't know and don't care).

b) What comes first, the appeal to other demographics or the interest from said demographic?

-I bet you think that's a chicken-egg question, which would admittedly be cute, but actually similar histories in movies and books prove it's not. The appeal almost always comes first, and then lo and behold, the statistically likely audiences show up in droves. Look at Twilight! It succeeded solely because it aimed itself at an underserved book audience. Or XCOM/Civ5 for the strategy demographic, if you want to talk about something not shit. Business has proven time and time again that if you're aiming at an underserved market, all you have to do is exist, regardless of quality. From a business perspective, aiming where no one else has is almost always a winner.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Would broodmother count? Giant spider in Dota 2? She wants to kill all the heroes of the world to stop them trampling her baby spiders.

Except that protecting her large brood of babies can be as problematic a motivation as doing it for a man.

CITATION NEEDED.

Could you elaborate on this?

 

[Eri]

After reading all the examples brought up in this thread, I have to say, This was a poorly thought out episode. Vast majority of times I find myself agreeing with Jim, but not this time.

 

[Tombsite]

Fuck your PC bullshit. Annoying as fuck, it's like MovieBob praising Antita Scamiisian.

Why is him making this video a problem for you? (I am really curious here).Also why is this the same as "MovieBob praising Anita Sarkeesian"?

There are reasons.

I assumed as much (otherwise it would have been an infantile knee-jerk reaction post which would have been completely pointless). That is why I asked for those reasons.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

There are certainly not very many protagonists that fit Jim's criteria. Unfortunately that remains true if you remove the "female" requirement. I can't think of too many male characters that fit his criteria. Hell, any game that featured the much maligned "damsel in distress" trope would be disqualified because they couldn't be motivated by a female to do whatever it is they do. It feels a little bit like moving goalposts to counter the multiple examples of female protagonists that do exist, even if they are too few in number.

I hate how baited these kinds of videos/discussions make me feel. I want to disagree even if I agree with the overall sentiment (namely that we could benefit from a greater diversity of characters, perhaps particularly female characters) because of flaws I find in the way it is presented and argued. I feel kind of the same way with those anti-smoking truth commercials. Smoking is bad for you but do you really have to present it in such a dickish and borderline dishonest way. It is very frustrating.

I don't want to dismiss Jim's point but let's not forget that the commonplace over reliance on tropes and stagnation of character has greatly reduced the quality and variety of characters both male and female, across many mediums.

 

[Gennadios]

Well, the only thing left to do now is for the internet to accept Jim's challenge and Rule 34 the s*** out of Vertigo to prove a point.

Nobody ask me what that point would be.

EDIT: OMG, it's already been done.

 

[Pat Hulse]

If looks doesnt matter, why cant women be "attractive" so to speak?
Why is the concept of Saints Row and other types of games such as MMOs completely discarded because theyre our creation not the developers?
Can then only good female characters exist if they're created by the developer and not the player?

They can, Jim doesn't have a problem with that. The problem is that apparently they can't be anything else than attractive. That is a problem.

Thats up for debate however and not an objective fact, especially if you just consider that to be the one part that matters to a player, regardless if its being marketed to you as such. Its a woman, shes attractive.
I like to compare this debate to the new steam controller rage:

oh my god look how bad this controller looks it must be shit.

While im thinking instead: I wonder what it feels like to use it for play though since i will use my controller for a game and not to look at.

Look you can split hairs as much as you want, but it's pretty hard to deny that a massive majority of female characters are designed with the intention of people trying to make them look good in mind. And a good looking character isn't a bad thing, a lot of people really like Mitsuru from Persona 3 and she's hardly lacking, but good looking for female is become ing what "White, brown haired thirty something" is for male. There is nothing wrong with a character like that but the sheer number of them is ridiculous and something ELSE would be nice.

Truth=/=Urgency

While its debatably somewhat true, the impact it has or the urgency of said subject isnt objectively problematic in itself, because again i must ask the question in that case: Does the opposite matter/not matter, and if so, why/why not?

I havent denied anything but neither am i so gullible to simply accept a black and white scenario without contrast.
First of all the fallacy that appearently then according to most arguments vs this, is well, we get a "non-traditionally attractive female protagonist" and then to break it down first of all. Well what constitutes one ideal over another, as you must be aware both male and female gamers find some "non-traditionally attractive males" to be appealing in games. The other problem comes with ambiguous genders and well, if it is a female but we cant tell, is it a female? If a tree falls in the forest without anyone around to hear it does it still make a noise, basically?
Then the third question of course becomes, protagonist, according to me? you? what about anti-heroes then or npcs or other characters in a game that have equal amount of impact on the game as you the player does?

Your question regarding "urgency" of this kind of representation discrepancy drudges up the dreaded Tumblr-abuse word of "privilege". Because you and I do not lack for representation in our favorite form of media, we cannot empathize with someone who has no high-profile representation in said medium. So the urgency of this sort of discrepancy may seem trivial to us, but as there are so many gamers clamoring for this sort of representation in games, one would assume they find it rather urgent.

To put it another way, your question seems to be "Yes, there probably is a discrepancy regarding the prominence of non-traditionally-attractive female protagonists in games vs. the male equivalent, but is that a serious problem?" Well, my feelings on the issue are that if a lot of people have a problem with it, their complaints seem reasonable, and changing things would require very little sacrifice from a practical or social perspective and our community stands to gain from it, I think whether or not it is "urgent" is a moot point. Rather, I think the more "urgent" matter is that people within our community seem hard-wired to resist this sort of observation and criticism as though it potentially threatens something.

It's really no different from when a person complains about how shooters are too generic or how single-player experiences are diminished to favor tacked-on multiplayer experiences. We complain about aspects of the industry that we don't like, hoping that they will change and improve our overall experience. That's exactly what those arguing for equal representation are doing. They dislike something in the industry, so they're pointing it out and complaining about it so it can change and improve their enjoyment of it. And unless someone thinks those changes will lessen their enjoyment of it, then I don't really understand why people bother to take it so personally as if they are accused of being called sexist just for enjoying video games.

Yeah but thats all subjective however and up to me or you to decide not one collective, since that pretty much voids all form of individuality which is yknow, fucking terrible. Once more, its not really urgent and may not even be all that important, trivial at best but hey, if creators come along with creations of said things to counter that then hooray for them *golfclaps* but it wont be the end of the world if they dont.
Then again i would like games to be appriciated for games and not for other things like how the controller looks or if my protagonist happens to be a nontraditionally attractive female or not, and if does come to that, then i would like the game to actually be praised and reviewed on the basis of it BEING A GAME, but appearently thats too much to ask from some people i guess :L

Well a lot of religious fundamentalists also have problems with todays world yet we can hopefully all agree that theyre far from reasonable, as is the case with this debate that, while perhaps a vocal but very stupid part of the debate, argues for one thing, doesnt by default make it valid or reasonable based simply on numbers, but rather how well their arguments hold up against their counterarguments, which they dont, not all that much exactly anyway...

Eh, i guess some people do but theyre usually stupid, i may not like what you like but i wont hate you for liking what i dont like, if that makes any sense, since i objectively cant tell you: what you enjoy is shit. because yknow, enjoyment is subjective and all that

The difference is that appeasing religious fundamentalists who complain would severely negatively impact several individuals who do not share those beliefs by restricting LGBT rights and affecting women's health issues. Whereas turning, say, Trevor from GTA V into a woman and basically changing next to nothing else about him probably wouldn't have negatively impacted the game or anyone's enjoyment of it in any significant way. You'd basically just have to slightly alter the character design and get rid of the scene where he shows off his dick. And it would have had the added bonus of engendering good will from gamers who wish to have more diverse examples of female protagonists in video games.

There's also the fact that religious fundamentalists are not in any way marginalized members of society (tax breaks, tons of representation in media as well as air time, a great deal of political influence and representation), but I don't think that's a necessary argument to make regarding this particular issue, valid or not.