Personally I contest the right of certain people to declare things sexist and have that be simply accepted as a sacrosanct fact.CpT_x_Killsteal said:Not a GG thread, bring that up and I'll shank you.
The purpose of this thread was to get two vehemently disagreeing sides to come to a bit of an understanding. The two sides that disagree the most are GG and "anti" GG, so excluding them from the discussion with threats of knife-death was a shortsighted decision.
Critiquing games from a feminist perspective and/or pointing out things that are targeted at men, or, sexist etc, is fine, debate over it is a good thing, freedom of speech, yada yada.
I don't think this is where the divide lies however. We see sexism and other discriminatory concepts as bad, something that should be gotten rid of. When we label Assassin's Creed as sexist, or Bayonetta, or Tomb Raider, or any other game, to some people it comes across as "X is sexist, so we must get rid of it". Thing is, I don't think this is what most people mean when they say that. If a person or a law is sexist, we see that as a bad thing, but if a game has a sexist element, (the women being side characters, all the player characters being men etc,) it's not necessarily "bad", it just "is". People don't mean "we must destroy it!", it's merely an observation.
So, partly inspired by the recent Jimquisition, if you observe a sexist element in a game, whether it's the only showing of women being background characters, the female lead constantly needing the male's help, gratuitous crotch shots in Bayonetta:
Would this alone drive you away from the game?
Would you change it?
What would you have preferred the dev team did differently about this sexist element?
Etc?
Note: When I stated certain things are sexist in some way, I was using examples, not my own observations (though my observations may or may not align with some of these examples, they aren't the point here, please don't lose focus of the actual question).
Be civil, no shitfights, ->stay (roughly) on topic<-, try to be concise.
First, these things are rarely merely observations but also come with elements of shaming. One crucial reason I defend Bayonetta is the Anti-Bayonetta crowd makes you out to be a bad person if you like the game. Aesthetically is the crotch shot bad? Is it necessarily offensive to really anyone?
Second, I'd question if anything needs to be changed at all.