MarsAtlas said:
runic knight said:
Because trying to represent the cultural ideal of what is a seedy corrupt underbelly of society is not a viable reason?
1. There's absolutely no reason for that entire level to exist, let alone for it to be a strip club.
2. Drug labs, meth dens, drug cartels, gang hideouts, animal fights, chop shops and auto theft, robbery, muggings, criminal defense lawyers and the entire gambling industry? I've played Absolution, and as far as I could tell, none of those were included.
1. First off, lets admit there is absolutely no reason for the game itself to exist, that it is merely the whim of the creators in an attempt to make a profit as best they see fit. As such, it is utterly pointless to try to claim that
necessity matters in the damnedest. Sorry, but that is as pointless as if I was arguing against men being used as goons. Technically, there is "absolutely no reason" to have them when their functionality could be replaced with cameras or even rombas.
Now assuming that is covered, there actually is a valid reason as to why the creators choose that setting, I gave you one. It could be in order to play off of cultural association of strip clubs and criminal worlds. That is a valid reason.
2. No, they weren't as far as I can tell. The point I was raising was that strip clubs have a cultural association with crime and could explain their inclusion. I did not argue that was the only thing associated (even mentioned the opposite there), nor was I arguing that they had to use all thing associated. Instead I was trying to offer explanation as to why the choice that as actually used might have been made.
Diving off this into the topic question itself, no, a game such as this in no way "hates" woman for how they portray them any more then a movie with a black character that dies "hates" black people.
Would you say that a film has a distaste for black people if it consistently portrayed them as howling idiots and criminals, and their only use was in service to (
coincidentally) white people, meanwhile people who aren't black are protrayed in any range from incompetent buffoon to brave and intelligent hero?
The strip club has no reason to exist, but I don't think the game would be nearly as reviled for its treatment of women if it wasn't so consistently inhuman and quite frankly mortifying (see OP).
Well firstly, no, I wouldn't if the context of their usage made sense to portray them as such and, as said before, the level of care in the characterization was equal to any other character of their type regardless of race. I would think it is a shame that over use of them as such was a reoccurring pattern, but I wouldn't try to argue that the overall pattern I see is somehow damning to all examples that use it solely because the pattern it big and obvious. That is being lazy and looking at things backwards.
Here, lets put it his way. majority of the characters are white while the only black character is the sidekick comic relief. Now, you look at him and go "see, he is black, he is an idiot and criminal, so it is stereotyping."
Now myself? I look at the character and go "see, he is the sidekick, his purpose is to make the hero look better, so being an idiot and criminal fulfills this goal. It sucks he is black but that isn't an indictment against all black people, it is just an annoying
overall pattern within the industry.
Simply put, the question is to ask is "would this character be different if he was a different skin color" not "why is this character with this skin color like this." The former isolates the character's purpose in relation to similar media and searches for what makes them different on the criteria of race alone (the differences that would exist if the character was another color). Yours, the latter, looks for the character's race first and then seeks patterns in their usage in order to justify a perceived view (assuming character traits are because of race rather then identifying the ones that are from the ones that are just story-demanded)
Again, your
opinion about the necessity of the strip club's existence is noted and promptly ignored since that opinion obviously wasn't shared by the people actually putting the work into the game and, as we should all know on the internet by now, your opinion is as worthless as everyone elses. Furthermore, I have even been so kind as to humor you with a legitimate reason for its inclusion in relation to the plot of the story the game was trying to tell. I'm sorry you disagree with the reason being valid enough to include into the game, but frankly necessity has never been a point to discuss in these topics about a luxury product in the first place. That is a worthless path to venture down since all aspects of the game from graphical choices to style, to character to location to weapons to mechanics can be argued as not being needed. It is an opinion and while noted, that particular topic doesn't matter a lick in this discussion
Now, in order for someone to claim hatred here, there has to be an actual dislike towards the gender on display. No, simply having a representation that you disprove of is not "a passionate or intense dislike", it is a representation you dislike and thus are projecting an intent of malice behind choosing.
So you're going to provide me a long list of valid reasons why the female assassins are in fetish outfits used for sex while the male assassins that are standing right next to them are wearing actual clothing? Or why a child who doesn't attend school has a schoolgirl outfit with a skirt length shorter than what can be found in actual pornography?
Actually, I thought I had when I went over the whole theme thing, but I suppose it would be prudent to mention that those are specific tropes too. In fact, the beautiful assassin is a frequent trope in a lot of fiction, not just the Noir type.
As for the reason the girl wears the school girl uniform, my assumption would be the ease of getting the idea of "this is an innocent girl" across at a glance. You know, the same sort of story-telling short hand I discussed before.
Now, do understand that my understanding of why they are used does not mean a preference towards their continued usage, merely an understanding of why they might be used and continue to be so.
Now if there was no contextual reason for the representation, if they were horrible stereotypes and caricatures amid a sea of otherwise well crafted and deep male characters, if they were treated differently not within the context of the story or the purpose of their characters existence within the game's story being told but rather their gender existed with the intent of representing the sex the models portrayed, well then you might have a point to start that discussion on.
So the assassin nuns belong to some sort of trope?
Did I mention that their existence of the stripper assassins is never explained and they're never brought up again once you've dealt with them, whereas the male villains actually have things like, oh, I don't know, a personality, backstory, a home, lines of dialogue, and names?
Actually, yes, assassin nuns are a combination of a few tropes.
The assassin woman is itself an old trope. So old in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the nun thing wasn't added just to make it less boring.
The nun part? Well lets see. First there is always the whole "corrupt church" trope and iconography ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SinisterMinister ). If used to falsely represent a church morality there is a trope for that too ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadHabits ). Hell, the idea of evil nuns sounds kinda unoriginal to me, so I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't been done before whole sale.
You didn't mention it, but I fail to see how it relates too much unless you mean that there are an equal male counterpart to the stripper assassins that gets that treatment. Because the way you describe it to me, it is like you are comparing essentially glorified hounds to the actual assassin targets, which isn't the way to make the case here.
Funny enough, even assuming that there are a group of equal and opposite male assassins who are treated with motivations and the like, it doesn't demonstrate any sort of dislike or hate at all. At best, you could argue pandering to which I would agree and ask "so what?" At this point you could either argue that pandering itself is hateful (which is wrong flat out), or try to argue that the overuse of such pandering itself is hateful (which I already went over in how that is looking at an overall pattern and trying to use that to project a malice onto the pieces of that pattern.)
It would be no different they trying to argue that because blacks are arrested more often that anyone who arrests a black man is doing so for racist reasons. I see how that conclusion is made, but the logic just doesn't hold up.
Or I hate men because I have to kill them by the millions for being grunts (ignoring story context of the game trying to represent Film Noir representations of the criminal world where the common cultural expectation is that the grunt are male, as well as violent and largely not too bright).
Why do people keep saying this?
Its not the same for the following reasons.
1. Them being enemies means that they're competent, living beings with agency. Yes, you're shooting them, but you're shooting something that is behaving like an actual human being.
2. Male enemies are very rarely sexualized, whereas female enemies are very commonly sexualized. Have you ever seen any male stripper assassins before?
3. You're playing a male character that is, almost without exception, being positively portrayed (including Absolution).
4. The male characters games are given human traits, even if they're villains. Female characters are lucky to exist, and if they do, they quite rarely go without being sexualized. Did I mention that Victoria is fourteen years old? Yeah, I did, but I just want to hammer home the point that its so bad in Absolution that they can't even go without sexualizing a child.
1. You are shooting a cardboard cutout. You are trying to claim that by putting a female face over a dart board is somehow more wrong then putting a male one. That is the flaw here.
2. Male characters are used more often and in more roles and thus in order to prevent redundancy, a wider array of tropes are used. The hero tends to have a wider set of archetypes then the enemy grunt. When your hero is male, the majority of the enemies are male, the big villains are male, you will see a wider variety of tropes being used the the fewer female characters. None of this I will argue against. The problem is that you then jump the extra step to claim that such represents a gender motivated cause, which I have to argue against.
As for sexualization in particular, well, so what? Honestly, so what is a cardboard cutout is given a sexy face instead of a less sexy one? I could go into the whole idea of target demographics, selective appeal, gender-based response in relation to storytelling short hand and even biological variation among the genders in terms of what they (as a general rule of thumb) latch onto in characters based on visual versus feeling based connections, but at the end of the day it still boils down to "they are sexy, I am sorry you dislike, but so what?"
3. You are playing a protagonist, of course they will be "positively" portrayed regardless of race or gender in this instance. (used loosely positive here since you are, you know, a mass murderer)
4. I recall a hitman game with a strip club where the female strippers are scare, trying to comfort a new stripper and general reflect about as much personality as the usual goons. Not a lot, but hey, equal representation for background character regardless of gender there. Can't remember if this was the game or not so I will argue in good faith that I may be mistaken.
Even assuming I am mistaken, you still have to ask "would this character be different if the gender was flipped". Now from what I recall and what you say, the only example for this would be the school girl. Ok, we have a point to start from. Aside from your refusal to believe that in a game trying so hard to be "edgy and dark" as this, the use of a younger girl in such a role is sacrosanct, I don't know what to say here. Aside from my agreement of "this is bad" on a moral stance, how does it actually make a case of hatred against women?
So far your entire argument is
"They are made sexy, this is bad"
ok...and? what is your point beyond that? On a moral ground I can understand and even agree at times, but as an actual discussion it is just flaunting your opinion in a way that doesn't actually mean anything.
And lets go full silly for a second here and say that people all agred that this was hatred against women and that as a result things should change. Because the discussion was so concerned with that sort of portrayal, do you know what the "solution" to that would be?
Well not polarizing half of the general population by treating them as sex objects rather than anything resembling a character helps. You know, doing things like dressing them in actual clothing rather than skimpy fetish outfits (dominatrix nuns are obvious, Victoria in a schoolgirl outfit even though the game explicitly says that she doesn't attend school). Give them some motivation, agency, and genuine emotion rather than being an object in a way that resembles the "Capture the Babe" mode in Duke Nukem Forever. Maybe not make the only female character in the game one that the main character fucks at the end? Simple things like that, really.
You'd be amazed at how much women appreciate it when a game doesn't treat them like fleshlights.
hmm, it seems you want to stretch this conversation beyond the game in question and into the realm of video games as a whole.That is fine, it was leading there but just letting you know that you are doing so here and that undermines any case against the game in question when you have to point to
other examples as if they mean a damn when talkling about
this example.
so in response I will tackle both aspects, the single game here and the game as part of the whole.
Hitman
This is a game meant to pander to a crowd that enjoyed the older style crime noir stuff, with heavy dashes of the classic grindhouse style movie themes thrown in. It was made with a terrible overall plot, flat characters and a heavy reliance on trope usage. Expecting the female characters to be anything more then what they were is, in a word, entitled. This is not meant to be a deep character piece where we explore the problems of humanity through the lens of the characters within the story. Hell I can't even remember the main story of the protagonist and how this game in particular falls into that exactly, save a vague notion of getting revenge against his former employers? Hitman games are not something I spent a lot of time on, I'll be honest.
Regardless though, this highlights the distinction I tried to make earlier perfectly. The characters are flat an largely unmemorable. The cannon fodder are stereotypical to the setting they are in and the use of story-telling short hand is apparent across the board. That some villains actually got backgrounds surprises me, though again with the backgrounds being entirely unmemorable I can only imagine it was to distinguish target a from target b and to justify the talking point set pieces. You may say that none of that excuses the use of female characters the way they were, to which I will promptly shrug and go "I agree but well, the game wasn't meant for us it seems", but our dislike of the lack of complex and motivated characters in a game like this is a moot point, and certainly not a representation of a hatred towards women.
Gaming as whole.
Hitman is representative of an overall trend we see in the largest advertised part of triple A gaming about female portrayal, demographic targeting and sexualization. It is also representative of the lack of care for story and characterization, the over-reliance of tropes and storytelling short hand and a host of other entwines issues.
now, when talking about the overall trend we can address that the trend is treating female characters differently as representative of sexism, since unlike trying to use the trend to justify that within an individual point of data (single game)showcasing the trend, judging a trend on a trend is not blaming a single game for the fact there happens to be a shit ton like it as if that single game somehow is at fault. Of course I feel it is important to note that the idea of the representation of female characters being done so based on some malice or discrimination against women is absurd, and it is near entirely actually the opposite, that of trying to garner the male audience. And no, trying to attracted one
is not the same as trying to discriminate against the other. Not any more then trying to sell hamburgers is somehow trying to discriminate against vegans.
That said, the over-reliance on the same character archetypes and tropes and the same gender ratio in games is still tiring and creatively bankrupt and I would be happier if it stopped. The difference being that instead of assuming hatred is involved, let alone discrimination, sexism or any sort of malicious intent, I seek to understand the actual reasons and solve the problem there.
anyways, I digress. within gaming as a whole, the issues we both dislike exist because, at the end of the day, they work.
Wait... no, that isn't quite right. It isn't that they work, it is that they are attached to what does work. They are superfluous but assumed to be part of the winning formula and thus are perpetuated.
Lets say I sell hamburgers that have pickles. Now, a lot of people don't care about the pickles, some actually like them, but a good chuck just removes them before eating. But I make a lot of money selling the burgers so I don't want to change the recipe too much so pickles come with a lot. Some people hate pickles and wont even buy the burgers with them, but at this point, what do I care? I am making mad burger money and they probably wouldn't buy them anyways.
Now some time down the line, I want to make new products, well I change things. Lets say I take the pickles off and it sells the same. What actually happens is the one who didn't want the pickles buy them now and those that did stop in relatively equal amounts. What I see as the bottom line though is that nothing really changed, so I pick a different trait to mess with. Wait, no, that isn't a fair example to corporate game makers..
Lets say I want to make a new product and instead of doing the sensible thing above, I use my corporate know-how to try to predict what people want. The result is a shitburger on moldy green bread because that is what the cool kids like, right? Also has no pickles because there was a 45% demand for that. But I don't want to spend a lot of money so I halfass the marketing since the product that sells well already, the hamburger, needs that funding. The new product, predictably, bombs. And the lack of pickles is assumed as part of the problem. So pickles persist.
What is the point of all this pickle talk you might ask? Well, at any point in all that, did you think the gender of who was buying hamburgers really meant a damn compared to the actual financial motivations so predictable you could time your watch to? Do you really think how female characters are portrayed or how often they are used was ever about female gamers or the audience that wasn't buying their games in the first place?
I don't like the current system any more then you, but it is beyond worthless to try to look at it like the portrayal of female characters in gaming as a whole gives a shit about our personal thoughts on the matter when they have a mountain of sales data to support whatever stupid idea they tricked themselves into believing and a lack of will to truly back up breaking that mold.
So at the end of the day, even if it doesn't
really work, it still works, and it isn't because of sexist developers or discrimination against anyone, it is simply an opinion that is sometimes true about the sales data.
Well, that and the fact some people just want to make that sort of game, but we are arguing the trend as a whole, no the motivations of individual programers, artists and developers in this case.
The same games with either equally annoying "positive" female character tropes being used in order to avoid the claims of hatred against women
The Mary Sue, and...?
Yeah, admittedly, I kind of like the Mary Sue, but thats because its nice to have characters who aren't cynical about everything. Thats the only positive trope I can think of related to female characters in gaming.
You can have non-cynical male characters too. Actually, the over-reliance on the cynical male lead is just another over used trope showcasing that the problem is not just a gender portrayal thing, but rather a symptom of a larger shared problem within a lot of gaming.
