Um, you may want to double check that. Bungie made that game. Rockstar just made the PS2 port. They may own the game now, but I'm pretty sure Bungie are the ones who made it.Rebel_Raven said:
Jimquisition: Vertigo
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
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Give me any subject involving characters or objects and I can make a list of increasingly stringent demands that only have one passing qualifier. That what he's done. Between the countless examples offered by other posters that prove this point almost complete fallacy, and obvious characters disqualified for the incorrectly applied definition of the qualification "protagonist", this video's point is ill-conceived.
I like Jim's insight on most subjects, but blindly agreeing with him, without stopping to ask if he's right, does everyone a disservice. He's shown in several videos that he's not nearly objective enough to argue this topic. Always picking the one side and hastily dismissing the legitimate points from the other side. Most of his sexism videos are Jim at the worst use of his, otherwise normally insightful, perspective.
I like Jim's insight on most subjects, but blindly agreeing with him, without stopping to ask if he's right, does everyone a disservice. He's shown in several videos that he's not nearly objective enough to argue this topic. Always picking the one side and hastily dismissing the legitimate points from the other side. Most of his sexism videos are Jim at the worst use of his, otherwise normally insightful, perspective.
The object of the documentary, and the studies its based on, is both sexes, not just women. Just wanted to get that out of the way first. As for your hypothetical scenario (which for the sake of argument I won't argue against) why is it pertinent that the guy who made the documentary is white? A claim is a claim, all that matters is the evidence and logic behind it. Any other approach is racist/sexist/whatevrist because its making prejudgements about the claim based on some quality of whomever made the claim.Dragonbums said:
Your line of argumentation is the same as saying (minus the word associations of course, from a purely formalist perspective):
"I was a neo-nazi once! How dare you say I didn't suffer from social ostracism in modern western society! Based of some study made by a jew about nazis killing six million?! Bogus!"
(and yes this can theoretically qualify as a reductio ad absurdum/ad hitlerum, but nonetheless I think its pertinent at least for illustrative purposes.)
I am kinda murky on it, but I have the Oni icon for my R* social account, so they still have some control of the game. They also produced the PC version.erttheking said:
So bungie made the PC version, R* produced it, made a Ps2 port, and produced that. Close enough, kinda?
I think it's up to R* if they wanna make an Oni 2, and I wish they would.
Well, 13 pages, I'm sure mine will get lost in the shuffle, but I'd like to throw in my contender, Big Mama from Shock Troopers! She's a playable character, not conventionally attractive, totally a badass w/o getting her strength or motivation from any man, and she's a minority character to boot!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBcHDWjm4TA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBcHDWjm4TA
I can think of a recent example of a femme-protag that meets the Sterling test: Fat Princess from Playstation All-stars (Is that the title? I don't want to look it up).
You can play her in a solo campaign all the way through, and for all intents and purposes she is the cartoony videogame equivalent of what a dude-bro would label as a ham beast.
Personally, I agree with Jim. Gaming does need more examples like Brienne of Tarth. After seeing her kick ass all of last season in Game of Thrones I dare anyone to say they did not find her personality attractive as an orgy with a host of angels (guy or girl angels take your pick my compatriots. This is the no-judgement-zone).
What game makers don't understand, and what adolescent and pubescent shit heads need to be TAUGHT is that the most attractive quality on the entire planet is EMPATHY! Once both parties can accept this, the healing can begin.
You can play her in a solo campaign all the way through, and for all intents and purposes she is the cartoony videogame equivalent of what a dude-bro would label as a ham beast.
Personally, I agree with Jim. Gaming does need more examples like Brienne of Tarth. After seeing her kick ass all of last season in Game of Thrones I dare anyone to say they did not find her personality attractive as an orgy with a host of angels (guy or girl angels take your pick my compatriots. This is the no-judgement-zone).
What game makers don't understand, and what adolescent and pubescent shit heads need to be TAUGHT is that the most attractive quality on the entire planet is EMPATHY! Once both parties can accept this, the healing can begin.
Teenage girl romance is not the same as middle aged woman romance, which is indeed a saturated market. Teenage girls, especially teenage girl nerds, was an underserved market that allowed the success of Twilight and Hunger Games. Name another book series specifically for teenage girls and teenage girl nerds. I'll wait.uanime5 said:
Blacksploitation films. Another great example- no one made films to appeal to black people because they assumed they wouldn't sell. Huge financial successes when someone finally noticed the waiting market.
It's very simple- businesses will stick to the same models until they sink by them because they're so terrified of any risk, particularly when they have such overinflated budges (as you noted). But as Jim has discussed in many videos, there's no good reason to put out that much fucking money when making a game! Then you could aim for new markets without the ludicrous upfront costs, minimizing the risk while still allowing for expansions to market share. If overbudgeted games are the cause of flops, why not make some cheaper ones to expand your audience?
This principle applies to the "well the change is inevitable stop whining about it" crowd. No, the change isn't inevitable. Objects do not move without the application of outside forces, and that applies to businesses too. Businesses HATE change and will always be dragged to it kicking and screaming (witness every safety regulation ever). Quite frankly discussions like this are the only outside force that could change because of the lack of current female consumers. The only way a company could even know there are missed consumer bases is conversations like this.
Anyways, I have offered a handful of examples of where aiming for underserved markets hit the jackpot. You have provided none of this same tactic causing a company's implosion.
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Oh, and that other argument, the "I'm so sick of hearing about this (gender issues in games)".
If you're sick of these discussions, why are you still in them? No one put a gun to your head and forced you to post! And it's the same people saying this time and time again. Are you just masochists or what?
ight. fair point. But I still think hetero guy devs'll be hetero guy devs', and the market for male servicing games won't evaporate. I know. I admit I'm a customer
. A real game changer would be not just women who aren't held by early 20th century female perceptions but one that a 'dude' gamer values beyond sex appeal. Technically in movement, and because of shared human aspirations. If you look at how valuable Major Kusanagi is as a brilliant leader, respectable and cool head in Ghost in the Shell. If you want someone in your corner you don't get better than her. In a jam she's always right on time.
What I dislike is the proclivity of total arsehole protagonists, or plastic white dudes and the underlying fearfulness regarding display of sexual characters because that feeds the cynicism.
I enjoy playing as unrepentant villians and total ???marks but I'd also like more progressive dude heros Peter Parkers and Karate Kid's who kick ass, but really when necessary. Who even if they are still initally motivated by love and attraction but realize their power is their global responsibility, and grow into their 'hero' status. They think about their desires, pursuits and how what they do affects others, and earn their keep with people instead of just 'f-you I got mine'
. A real game changer would be not just women who aren't held by early 20th century female perceptions but one that a 'dude' gamer values beyond sex appeal. Technically in movement, and because of shared human aspirations. If you look at how valuable Major Kusanagi is as a brilliant leader, respectable and cool head in Ghost in the Shell. If you want someone in your corner you don't get better than her. In a jam she's always right on time.
What I dislike is the proclivity of total arsehole protagonists, or plastic white dudes and the underlying fearfulness regarding display of sexual characters because that feeds the cynicism.
I enjoy playing as unrepentant villians and total ???marks but I'd also like more progressive dude heros Peter Parkers and Karate Kid's who kick ass, but really when necessary. Who even if they are still initally motivated by love and attraction but realize their power is their global responsibility, and grow into their 'hero' status. They think about their desires, pursuits and how what they do affects others, and earn their keep with people instead of just 'f-you I got mine'
You're aware that it's a) literally impossible to separate societal factors from biological factors in purchasing decisions like this, meaning these decisions could just as easily be down to societal influence and b) there exist(ed) societies in history that have completely different gender roles than what is now considered traditional?uanime5 said:
(sauces, pick your spice: we've got official research paper, wikipedia and blog post)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174235
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_roles_among_the_indigenous_peoples_of_North_America
http://culturalfascinations.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/women-who-hunted-an-examination-of-gender-roles/
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Also, oodles of people who mentioned Wynne from DA:O - you clearly haven't been around the escapist long enough
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/stolen-pixels/6848-Stolen-Pixels-148-Dragon-Aged
Well honestly I was thinking about gta at first but then I realized that none of the other rockstar games had any female player controlled characters either (Well except in Max Payne 2 where you get to play as Mona Sax briefly)Dragonbums said:
Anyway if any game company has the potential to create a unconventional female character its rockstar
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ParanormalRomancedeathjavu said:
look under literature
Also Nancy Drew, and that one thing about the girl that was recently on kickstarter for a reboot/continuation
I personally find discussions of any sort fun, but to explain the rest of my brethren:deathjavu said:
a)These discussions bleed out and affect everyone, especially when their express purpose is to shame those in disagreement into submission
b)This is not a case of if you ignore it, it will go away. Such a thing as opportunity costs exists (and is rarely, if ever, mentioned.)Recently Anita Sarkeesian was hired on by DICE to "monitor the representation of women in Mirror's Edge 2". Is it wrong for someone who doesn't care about these issues or finds them trivial to complain about money being spent on them instead of on improving the game's gameplay or environments?
Sick of this 'gender issues' bullshit Jim.
Women aren't represented as variously as men because there's not as many women as playable characters. Developers have only produced pure power fantasy without any of the artistic deviance that comes with an en masse market were products are required to differentiate themselves.
Why?
Because games with female protagonists have traditionally sold poorly compared to those with male ones.
It isn't misogynistic, its a simple case of capitalistic push and pull factors.
Its similar to, say, someone complaining that its racist that not enough anime gets shipped over to their local video outlet, even though they're the only one interested in that sort of thing.
Women aren't represented as variously as men because there's not as many women as playable characters. Developers have only produced pure power fantasy without any of the artistic deviance that comes with an en masse market were products are required to differentiate themselves.
Why?
Because games with female protagonists have traditionally sold poorly compared to those with male ones.
It isn't misogynistic, its a simple case of capitalistic push and pull factors.
Its similar to, say, someone complaining that its racist that not enough anime gets shipped over to their local video outlet, even though they're the only one interested in that sort of thing.
Thank you, I will have to go to the schools library and read this closer. Very compelling work from the synopsis, but as always the devil lies in the details. Its quite possible this can be described in terms of the difference between Empathizing and Systematizing (Simon's work). Maybe its even evidence (of some sort) of the predicted extreme empathizing type.deathjavu said:
Because fundamentally whose in charge or who does what duties, does not necessarily have to affect who likes what.
Good stuff though, very though provoking, more like this!.
Yeah, dictionary.com - quality reference material right there. I was using it in the more traditional sense - which is simply over-confident, not necessarily arrogant.Velocir_X said:
Notice how there are multiple meanings of words attached to definitions? I'm pretty sure you weren't using "dense" in terms of weight-to-volume ratios, because that wouldn't make sense in the context..
Considering how extensive TVTropes lists usually are, delving into the most obscure of obscure series, that's actually a pretty short list (especially in non-lit categories, which I realize isn't what we were talking about but is still kinda relevant). Several of those series aren't centered around female characters so I'm not entirely sure if they fit the bill (?) (I didn't want to go through them all, I haven't been trapped on TVT in years and I intend to keep it that way). Admittedly, there are a lot more than I would have expected. But I'm still sticking to the "Twilight aimed at a market that wasn't terribly well served" explanation because it's generally the most reasonable explanation for its success.Velocir_X said:
They hired who for what? Couldn't they have gotten an actual female game developer or something? Someone who understands how making games works? I know a couple of them have quit due to harassment but there have to be some female developers still around...
Ok, point you on that one. But talking about opportunity cost is participating in the conversation, wheras "I wish this conversation would go away" is really not.
I don't buy the first point though. The only way someone could be "shamed" is if they entered into some part of the conversation, i.e. by clicking on a link that was almost certainly explicitly about this subject. I've avoided these conversations for days and weeks at a time while still following gaming news to a fairly reasonable degree, it wasn't even hard.
I have no idea why I jumped in twofooted this time. Just having a shit day, I guess.
"Zatkin said. It?s also hard to draw many broad conclusions from this data. There are so few games with exclusively female heroes, and those few games are given such a small marketing budget, do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero would perform?"deathjavu said:
The study is inconclusive. My best counterargument goes as follows: From the set of games that have had little to no marketing we have seen at least a handful of smash hits (minecraft most readily comes to mind). If the games with female only protagonists belong to that set, and in terms of that set are statistically significant (looking in terms of all games that have had similar marketing budgets to, say, mirror's edge, fat princess or Remember Me, 24 games ain't bad), wouldn't it be logical to expect at least one smash hit with a female only protagonist? This is all tentative hypothesizing of course.
However, they talk about another article in which marketing is identified as one of the strongest predictors of successVelocir_X said:
http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/the-power-of-review-scores-why-critics-have-more-control-than-we-think1
"Awareness goes a long way. Marketing spend is actually a higher factor on sales than game quality."
Outlier success stories such as Minecraft does not a solid conclusion make, as we both well know. Also, I will guess without reservation that "games with little marketing" is a much, much, MUCH bigger data pool than "games with female protagonists". There are tons of games that come out every year that we never hear about- most without female protagonists.
Damn, I need to go to bed. Look around for more scholarly articles about historical tribes with different gender roles (most of them were highly culturally impacted by contact with "western" civilization, which is why we have to go anthropological). I know I've read about others. It's also true that this doesn't really talk about what people "liked"...but then again, historically we were way more concerned with survival and we don't have nearly as much data about leisure time. Because, y'know, they didn't have much. The point I was trying to make is that it is one of the few pieces of data we can get about the line between societal and biological influences in gender roles because we're influenced by the society around us from age 0. Societies with non "traditional" gender roles kinda point towards societal factors, but admittedly data can be a bit scarce.
Plus there's the whole argument that other historical records have been skewed by males dominating the field (anthropology) in the 17-1800s when it was starting up in the modern sense, eras in which male domination would have been assumed... but that's a whole other kettle of fish I don't know a whole lot about and my god I have to get up at 7 it's 1:00 gnight.