Poll: Hitman Absolution hates women

Erttheking

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jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
IceForce said:
erttheking said:
IceForce said:
erttheking said:
Bottom point I'm trying to make is that you can be dark without being sleazy. Kill a woman. Fine. Kill a defenseless woman. Still fine. Kill a sexualized defenseless woman. You just made things creepy and weird.
Where in Hitman Absolution are you forced to kill a sexualized defenseless woman? (Nevermind Anita Sarkeesian deliberately doing it, to falsify 'typical' gameplay footage in order to prove a point.)
Haven't played the game, but according to Zhukov, who has, you are required to kill a woman who strips in an attempt to convince you otherwise. 47, being 47, isn't persuaded. She's married to some dude called Dexter.
The scene in question:


Woman? Yes.
Sexualized? Yes.
Defenseless? No, she pulls a gun on you.
Allow me to correct myself. You kill a sexualized woman who can defend herself. Doesn't make me feel any more comfortable though.
If you're uncomfortable killing a person who is attempting to kill you...I think you've taken a wrong term somewhere.
Sex and violence just don't mix with me ok? The result makes me feel physical ill.
Personal qualms have no bearing on what is and is not good. I don't really care one way or the other about the depictions of women in Hitman. Mainly because in Hitman 99% of the world is an asshole and the only sensible people are 47 and the people he directly interacts and goes out of his way to protect.
Considering that good is subjective, yes they do. And even then you have to admit that even though everyone is an asshole, you have to admit that at the very least they treat women differently. You don't see men running around fighting in fetish costumes.
You see people running around in giant fucking big bird mascot costumes. Everyone in that game is treated ike shit.
Eh, bit of a difference between a comical bird outfit and a sexualized nun get up. They're both meant to say pretty different things about the person wearing it.
Everyone, unviersally besides the main 3 characters, are dehumanized, exploited and/or murdered. You'd have a better case in saying that the Hitman series hates humanity in general. And yes if you derive absolute disgust from pixels on a screen showing a woman getting punched in an outfit, YOU'RE the one being oversensitive. The game isn't mysognist (setting aside the case that that word means FUCK NOTHING anymore,considering how often it's used over nothing.). It's not sexist. It's an art piece. Art is not here to check some fucking box of "not-pissing-people-off". It's here to explore the human condition and pysche. Like it or not sexuality and violence are the 2 most instinctive things in human beings. You're not in the strip club to derive some fucking pleasure from it. You're supposed to HATE the place. Hate what it is, and who runs it. So you can justify throwing them off a windowsill. If anything you're there to assist the strippers in the club. To get them out from under the thumb of their pyscho boss.
I'm pretty sure that none of the male characters were wearing fetish outfits in combat. I'm not saying the devs should have, I'm just saying they're clearly treating the men differently from the women. I'm being oversensitive am I? Pardon me for thinking that a women in a fetish outfit getting murdered is more than a bit messed up. I'm perfectly fine with seeing people getting killed, I'm just freaked out by sexualized people getting killed, or people getting killed in a sexualized way, it feels messed up and almost pornographic. Like that scene from Hellsing where Alucard kills Rip Van Winkle by impaling her with the butt of a rifle, and the way the scene plays out looks disturbingly close to a rape scene. Same thing here, only much less extreme. Yes it is art. And you know what we do to art? We criticize it. You criticize it, even if its something you love, when it fucks up. Otherwise your love is blind. So you can stop treating my criticisms as attacks now. Explore the human pysche? Because it sounds like it's going for the mindset of "Tits and violence are mature" Also, I wasn't talking about the strip club. I was talking about the stripper assassin nuns. And I'm pretty sure that a group of assassin's dressed in fetish get up isn't "Exploring the human psyche"
 

Erttheking

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jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
IceForce said:
erttheking said:
IceForce said:
erttheking said:
Bottom point I'm trying to make is that you can be dark without being sleazy. Kill a woman. Fine. Kill a defenseless woman. Still fine. Kill a sexualized defenseless woman. You just made things creepy and weird.
Where in Hitman Absolution are you forced to kill a sexualized defenseless woman? (Nevermind Anita Sarkeesian deliberately doing it, to falsify 'typical' gameplay footage in order to prove a point.)
Haven't played the game, but according to Zhukov, who has, you are required to kill a woman who strips in an attempt to convince you otherwise. 47, being 47, isn't persuaded. She's married to some dude called Dexter.
The scene in question:


Woman? Yes.
Sexualized? Yes.
Defenseless? No, she pulls a gun on you.
Allow me to correct myself. You kill a sexualized woman who can defend herself. Doesn't make me feel any more comfortable though.
If you're uncomfortable killing a person who is attempting to kill you...I think you've taken a wrong term somewhere.
Sex and violence just don't mix with me ok? The result makes me feel physical ill.
Personal qualms have no bearing on what is and is not good. I don't really care one way or the other about the depictions of women in Hitman. Mainly because in Hitman 99% of the world is an asshole and the only sensible people are 47 and the people he directly interacts and goes out of his way to protect.
Considering that good is subjective, yes they do. And even then you have to admit that even though everyone is an asshole, you have to admit that at the very least they treat women differently. You don't see men running around fighting in fetish costumes.
You see people running around in giant fucking big bird mascot costumes. Everyone in that game is treated ike shit.
Eh, bit of a difference between a comical bird outfit and a sexualized nun get up. They're both meant to say pretty different things about the person wearing it.
I've read over a couple your posts. IT's the regular old "I don't like it therefore it must be badddd!". And of course you haven't provided jackshit to back up this highly opinionated assertion.
*Sigh* I don't hate Hitman. Feel free to look through my posts and find the part where I said that, you'll get nothing. I have it on my Xbox, got it with free games with gold. Haven't played it yet but I am genuinely looking forward to it. However, I am the type of person who sees things wrong with games, even games I like, and complain about it. Metro Last Light is one of my favorite games, but I am not keeping my mouth shut about how sexist it is. And despite the fact that really am looking forward to playing Hitman, I'm not the type of person who is going to look over flaws when I see it online.

And I'm getting pretty fucking tired that I can't give honest criticism on video games without people like you having knee jerk reactions that I apparently hate it because of its representation of women and that I'm an overemotional tool who wants to ruin everyone's fun. Do the devs of Hitman hate women? I doubt it. Where they thoughtless and careless with their representation of women. Pretty sure they were. Violence against sexualized women is sexual violence, no matter which way you slice it, and it's pretty fucked up.

Also you didn't reply to the comment in my last post at all. You were more concerned with talking about how I made no valid points. Please reply to it.
You know what I'm gettin tired of? People losing their shit at the slightest drop of the hat and claiming "THIS HATES THE WOMEN!" or "THIS IS MISOGNY!". Those words mean absolutely jack shit to me, and most people these days. They've been boiled down to "There is a woman who is not a fucking angel." If you wanna tell me that a video game hates women you're gonna need to present to me, with credible evidence, of a character punching a woman, and than while said woman character is down saying "I did that because you're a woman", or something similar. Anything else I take with a heaping mountain of salt.
Oh yeah, because I'm completely losing my shit here. Oh, and all criticism against sexism is because "There is a woman who isn't an angel" You just confirmed my theory that you don't have much knowledge about feminist theory, don't spend much time with people who care about these matters, and in general not very well informed about many of the criticisms made against gaming, or why they say them. Because no one criticizes games for having female characters that aren't angels. Heck, I just finished Wolfenstein the New Order, and it had some great female characters, one of them a serial killer and the other a shameless SS officer. The game even got praise for BJ having sex with a woman and doing it in a non sleazy way. There was NO backlash for this game. It really sounds like you're criticizing feminists from a distance without understanding their argument.

And I've not seen many arguments about games hating women. Unless they REALLY deserve it (Ride to Hell Retribution). So not sure where that's coming from. Saying there's sexism in a game does not equal "It hates all women". It means it screwed up its female characters or its representation of women.
 

Supdupadog

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So why do people keep saying it's ok for the examples given to have happened because plenty of guys die as well?

Are you trying to tell me it's an awful game all around in it's themes and presentation and I shouldn't play it?
 

Supdupadog

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erttheking said:
jpz719 said:
erttheking said:
IceForce said:
erttheking said:
IceForce said:
erttheking said:
Bottom point I'm trying to make is that you can be dark without being sleazy. Kill a woman. Fine. Kill a defenseless woman. Still fine. Kill a sexualized defenseless woman. You just made things creepy and weird.
Where in Hitman Absolution are you forced to kill a sexualized defenseless woman? (Nevermind Anita Sarkeesian deliberately doing it, to falsify 'typical' gameplay footage in order to prove a point.)
Haven't played the game, but according to Zhukov, who has, you are required to kill a woman who strips in an attempt to convince you otherwise. 47, being 47, isn't persuaded. She's married to some dude called Dexter.
The scene in question:


Woman? Yes.
Sexualized? Yes.
Defenseless? No, she pulls a gun on you.
Allow me to correct myself. You kill a sexualized woman who can defend herself. Doesn't make me feel any more comfortable though.

If you're uncomfortable killing a person who is attempting to kill you...I think you've taken a wrong term somewhere.
Sex and violence just don't mix with me ok? The result makes me feel physical ill.
Also why does she have to be naked in her fight?

Why not hold the writer to this scene they set up?
 

runic knight

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Supdupadog said:
So why do people keep saying it's ok for the examples given to have happened because plenty of guys die as well?

Are you trying to tell me it's an awful game all around in it's themes and presentation and I shouldn't play it?
Honestly, if that is the message you take then yeah, I suppose they are. I know I would say not to play it if you disliked the grind-house tone and violent nature. That just seems like good sense.

As for why bringing up guys dying, it is a counterpoint to the claim that women being killed is somehow intrinsically "bad", when killing guys is dismissed so often as less so.
 

Supdupadog

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runic knight said:
Supdupadog said:
So why do people keep saying it's ok for the examples given to have happened because plenty of guys die as well?

Are you trying to tell me it's an awful game all around in it's themes and presentation and I shouldn't play it?
Honestly, if that is the message you take then yeah, I suppose they are. I know I would say not to play it if you disliked the grind-house tone and violent nature. That just seems like good sense.

As for why bringing up guys dying, it is a counterpoint to the claim that women being killed is somehow intrinsically "bad", when killing guys is dismissed so often as less so.
Well the article is displaying why it seems to be weird compared to the male victims.

Male characters seem to be in charge, wearing tuxedos, and basically being cool. Women characters seem to be always sexually vusual and don't amount to much. The stripper nuns are apparently both needlessly sexy and underwhelming.

And this grind house thing is bull crap. I watched Del Toro and Tarantino's homage to those movies and it wasn't a long parade of weird unpleasant cheesecake and kicking down women.

You can do violent and sexy and gritty without sexism that seems to have no reason to be there.
 

Terminal Blue

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I didn't play Hitman Absolution, and you know what.. the marketing guy who decided to promote it with fetish nun combat sequences is totally to blame for that.

I really fucking love the Hitman series and particularly how it evolved in the games leading up to Blood Money (the pinacle, in my opinion). It has this wonderful grindhouse feel, much more so than games which self-consciously adopt wierd camera filters and such in order to look like grindhouse movies, and yeah, it has a lot of fetish fuel, but it is actually kind of inventive in its fetishes. It's a game where you can go on a rampage in a really shitty Santa outfit, there's a whole mission set in a BDSM club inside a functioning abattoir. I'm sorry.. that is fucking epic.

That said, the games do kind of hate women, and they hate men. Men in the Hitman games are almost universally portrayed as cruel, cowardly, psychopathic, weak or a combination of the above, while women are almost universally portrayed as idiots, sex objects or erotic predators. This is exactly what a good exploitation movie does, it creates a caricature of the world we live in in which all the ugly bits are magnified. It's a sleazy, nasty, violent little game series which doesn't take itself too seriously..

..and then that fucking trailer happened.

You could not miss the point harder if the point was on the fucking moon, it's like it maybe heard of exploitation but has no idea how to do it. Kung fu kicking fetishwear stripper nuns is not the setup for an exploitation film, it's the setup for a B-porno. It is lazy, cliched, unimaginative and just shows none of the dry cleverness and nihilistic detachment we'd come to expect. Weirdly, I didn't have nearly such a problem with the "perfectly executed" campaign, it did seem a little more Hitman to me, but even then the sex is so. fucking. vanilla. There's nothing really twisted about it beyond the fact that the sexy women are dead.. and sexy (edgy). Come on people.

Heck, it's saying something if you can stick half the characters in fetishwear and still come off like "tease and denial" means "my wife has a headache".

Basically, what I'm saying is I can deal with sexism when it's presented in a way which is imaginative and explicit enough to kind of be a thing. It's when it just becomes a symptom of lazy, unconscious writing tropes that it starts to bother me, and that's definitely the vibe I got from Absolution.
 

runic knight

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Supdupadog said:
runic knight said:
Supdupadog said:
So why do people keep saying it's ok for the examples given to have happened because plenty of guys die as well?

Are you trying to tell me it's an awful game all around in it's themes and presentation and I shouldn't play it?
Honestly, if that is the message you take then yeah, I suppose they are. I know I would say not to play it if you disliked the grind-house tone and violent nature. That just seems like good sense.

As for why bringing up guys dying, it is a counterpoint to the claim that women being killed is somehow intrinsically "bad", when killing guys is dismissed so often as less so.
Well the article is displaying why it seems to be weird compared to the male victims.

Male characters seem to be in charge, wearing tuxedos, and basically being cool. Women characters seem to be always sexually vusual and don't amount to much. The stripper nuns are apparently both needlessly sexy and underwhelming.

And this grind house thing is bull crap. I watched Del Toro and Tarantino's homage to those movies and it wasn't a long parade of weird unpleasant cheesecake and kicking down women.

You can do violent and sexy and gritty without sexism that seems to have no reason to be there.
but there is lies part of the problem, males characters aren't all like the protagonist (who as the role of protagonist is suppose to have that aspect about him as being someone the player wants to play as, or in the case of the chicken suit and stuff, someone the player wants to do goofy stuff with because it juxtaposes their character. And while needlessly sexy, need was never a factor to debate over in a game in the first place and even then not all are just sexy for the sake of sexy. A lot of the older style grind-house films ARE very filled with violence and sexuality but that is another matter since how one person tries to reference or homage something will probably differ from how others do.
 

visiblenoise

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evilthecat said:
Basically, what I'm saying is I can deal with sexism when it's presented in a way which is imaginative and explicit enough to kind of be a thing. It's when it just becomes a symptom of lazy, unconscious writing tropes that it starts to bother me, and that's definitely the vibe I got from Absolution.
I'm absolutely fine with your post despite not sharing the same opinion because you qualify it from your perspective only, and it's all within the bounds of the game and whether you enjoyed it or not. When somebody just up and claims that "This is sexist!" how can we not think that they're making some kind of moral judgment on everyone who enjoyed it with no such complaints?
 

80sboy

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Well, it doesn't have a positive outlook of women... let's just say that.

Personally, I think I have a theory of where this is all coming from.

I call it, 'The Post-Xena Warrior Princess' matter. (Yeah, I know how stupid the name actually sounds but bare with me). Lol. Whenever women are painted with the image of being the strong, heroic, confrontational types that are usually reserved for male protagonist, there's always this sense that there's some level of misandry involved. That sense that since 'Jane' was never allowed to play with the big boys because she was born a she, that she now has a level of hatred for all men and really just wants to get even. If you ever watched that show, Xena, after some time the whole murdering of droves and droves of what appear to be misogynistic dudes, you'd get the sense that the overall message had something more to do with the war of the sexes. That Xena wasn't murdering all those dudes with great prejudice and serious anger because they were bad, but simply because of their Y chromosome. You could be a fan of Xena, run up to her and thank her for saving your village. But the second she turns her head and sees you, even with a smile on your face, all she'll think is 'MAN' and take your head off for it.

And in the end... bitterness is still bitterness, and portrayal of the man-hating feme fatale ends up leaving a sour taste in most people's mouth.

Funny thing about these type of characters which Lara Croft also subscribes to, is that they're always created by men. So... there's this messy snowballing going on where these characters are created by men on how they believe women would feel about being the lead protagonist in a world dominated by men, which leads to bitterness, which leads to characters like Agent 47 trying to put a cork on the whole 'I am woman hear me roar' crap.

Or to put it simply:

Male developers hating female character's because they felt like those female character's were always going to hate them back.

Misogyny through fear of misandry being present.

Stupid as all that sounds. I believe it to be present.
 

runic knight

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80sboy said:
Well, it doesn't have a positive outlook of women... let's just say that.

Personally, I think I have a theory of where this is all coming from.

I call it, 'The Post-Xena Warrior Princess' matter. (Yeah, I know how stupid the name actually sounds but bare with me). Lol. Whenever women are painted with the image of being the strong, heroic, confrontational types that are usually reserved for male protagonist, there's always this sense that there's some level of misandry involved. That sense that since 'Jane' was never allowed to play with the big boys because she was born a she, that she now has a level of hatred for all men and really just wants to get even. If you ever watched that show, Xena, after some time the whole murdering of droves and droves of what appear to be misogynistic dudes, you'd get the sense that the overall message had something more to do with the war of the sexes. That Xena wasn't murdering all those dudes with great prejudice and serious anger because they were bad, but simply because of their Y chromosome. You could be a fan of Xena, run up to her and thank her for saving your village. But the second she turns her head and sees you, even with a smile on your face, all she'll think is 'MAN' and take your head off for it.

And in the end... bitterness is still bitterness, and portrayal of the man-hating feme fatale ends up leaving a sour taste in most people's mouth.

Funny thing about these type of characters which Lara Croft also subscribes to, is that they're always created by men. So... there's this messy snowballing going on where these characters are created by men on how they believe women would feel about being the lead protagonist in a world dominated by men, which leads to bitterness, which leads to characters like Agent 47 trying to put a cork on the whole 'I am woman hear me roar' crap.

Or to put it simply:

Male developers hating female character's because they felt like those female character's were always going to hate them back.

Misogyny through fear of misandry being present.

Stupid as all that sounds. I believe it to be present.


An interesting idea, though the portrayal of the character doesn't seem to support that. 47, for all intent and purpose, kills coldly and emotionlessly. He isn't killing them because they are strong or weak females, there seems no actual care for or against gender based on gender alone, and he kills either gender rather unbiasedly (though kills far more males then females because more males populate the world he exists in and more males are targets to begin with).
Still, it seems a bit of a stretch to say the male developers hate women because they have a male character killing a female character in a game where he also kills a lot of male characters and does both killings dispassionately rather then in a fit of rage.

(now if say kratos was killing female gods in that way, your case would be stronger. Still flawed I think, but at least more consistent as the emotional rage bursts that fuel the final kills of the various gods could be presented as a developer cathartic venting personal feelings. Again, something still very disagreeable and debatable, but at least consistent with the line of reasoning you bring up.)

Furthermore, though they are very outnumbered, there are female developers, project handlers and artists involved and with the size of games being as big as they are, it really seems harder to justify female characters being made they way they are as a misogynist reply to a perceived misandry in the characters they are making themselves.
 

Erttheking

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visiblenoise said:
evilthecat said:
Basically, what I'm saying is I can deal with sexism when it's presented in a way which is imaginative and explicit enough to kind of be a thing. It's when it just becomes a symptom of lazy, unconscious writing tropes that it starts to bother me, and that's definitely the vibe I got from Absolution.
I'm absolutely fine with your post despite not sharing the same opinion because you qualify it from your perspective only, and it's all within the bounds of the game and whether you enjoyed it or not. When somebody just up and claims that "This is sexist!" how can we not think that they're making some kind of moral judgment on everyone who enjoyed it with no such complaints?
To be honest I used to (And sometimes do) think that people were insulting my taste when they said that a game was shit. I'm pretty sure most people (Unless they say otherwise in which case feel free to tell them to fuck off) feel anger towards the game and not the people who play it. More often than not I don't even think the people who play it cross their mind.
 

Zhukov

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neokiva said:
Continuity said:
I came across this blog post by Elizabeth Edwards (Creative Assembly artist) linked at Rock Paper Shotgun. Warning, there are spoilers.

http://lizedwardsart.tumblr.com/post/43226499697/hitman-absolution

What do you think? Is Elizabeth correct that Hitman Absolution hates women?

Really what I'm interested in here is the poll result but please leave a comment explaining your vote.
sigh hitman absolution doesn't hate women or men the game actively discourages you from killing innocents the only people you kill for a benefit is the target. I am sick of hearing this line of thinking that just because women npcs are there that must mean they are just put there to oppress women, this is however not the case and if feminists stopped shouting this bullshit, and actually took a course in game design and marketing they'd learn that your supposed to realistically populate the world and that is what they do with the npcs (which means neutral player character) whatever they choose to let you do to said npcs doesn't mean anything it's just a game it's not real get over it feminists.
That's not the argument being made here. By anyone. You're tilting at windmills.

Also, NPC actually stands for "non player character". Looks like you need to take a course in game design.
 

C.S.Strowbridge

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T_ConX said:
Any time I see someone complain that a game is misogynist because you have to kill female NPCs or female NPCs die in cut-scenes, I use certain...
That's a really bad formula, because it doesn't take into account any plot. If there are a bunch of men shooting at you and you shoot back, it is different than killing a woman in the shower. It is certainly different than killing a woman for no other reason than to advance the plot.

Imagine if that happened to you in a video game. Imagine you are playing a video game about someone who can kick ass and take names, but dies in a shower. You would be pissed off at that plot twist.

And killing women just to advance the plot is very problematic, especially when the protagonist is male. It gives the message than women's lives only matter in how they affect the lives of men. They don't have agency of their own.
 

Batou667

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erttheking said:
*Sigh* I don't hate Hitman. Feel free to look through my posts and find the part where I said that, you'll get nothing. I have it on my Xbox, got it with free games with gold. Haven't played it yet but I am genuinely looking forward to it.
In that case - and with the greatest of respect - exactly what are you basing your opinion on? Second-hand reports of selected bits of the game, a few YouTube videos, and the Attack of the Saints trailer? Please, I really do recommend you play the game as soon as possible, because it would be very easy indeed to get completely the wrong measure of the game if all you were exposed to were cherry-picked segments highlighting the kookiest and most un-PC scenes in the game.

You seem like an intelligent guy with decent enough reasoning, but you're sorely lacking in context at the moment and that mortally wounds any hope of holding an informed opinion on this subject. Play the game. On Normal difficulty you could get through it at an unhurried pace in, say, four evenings of play.

evilthecat said:
Sad that you let one silly and sensationalised trailer colour your opinion in that way. I think that trailer - like much of the game, actually - suffered from good and possibly even objectively "correct" intentions but tripped over its own feet when it came to execution. Technically the Saints trailer is very effective at establishing:

- The protagonist
- The protagonist's shift of allegiance
- Some of the antagonists
- The setting and theme (outrageous gritty violence superimposed on kitschy Americana)
- The variety of gameplay elements: stealth, hostage-taking, hand-to-hand combat, firearms

Unfortunately the take-home message many people may have got was "Look, this is a game where you can beat up sexy nuns, isn't that an exciting prospect!" - which is too bad, because at least 90% of the game is really nothing like that, in terms of content or theme. If we wanted to give Hitman Absolution a subtitle reflecting what you spend most of your time doing, it wouldn't be "nun-killing extravaganza" - it'd be something closer to "standing in the rain simulator".