Sweden Considering Sexism Labels For Video Games

[Fox12]

Oh, this is silly. How would one even quantify "gender equality" in games? By quality of character depth? That depends on the skill of the writer. By a female:male ratio? What if there are only two female characters, but they're ludicrously well written? I've always been against bad representations of women in games, but artistic freedom matters too. One of my favorite books is Lord of the Flies, and one of my favorite movies is The Thing. Are they bad for having an all male cast? Even though there was reason for having an all male cast? What about madoka magica, which was fantastic, despite having an all female cast?

I suppose a seal of approval for marketing would be mostly harmless, but I'd be happier if it wasn't government related.

Edit: ah, a translation error, that makes more sense.

 

[Darkmantle]

With games labeled as ?sexist? some companies will do their best to avoid the stigma.

Ah, this is the main point right here. It's not so much about letting consumers make informed decisions, that's an excuse. It's about shaming developers. It's always about shame.

 

[The Goat Tsar]

Are people really this foolish? Do they really think that a study funded by a measly $36,672 can really do anything? In the US, earmarked studies have been given much more to accomplish much less (let's study drunk mice!) Governments do random studies like this all the time.

And even if it does enact some change somehow, nothing whatsoever will be banned. Stop looking for things to be mad about. This isn't like movies where a PG-13 movie will do much better than an R rated movie. Ratings on video games have always been largely ignored.

 

[CaitSeith]

I wonder if that organization will also label sexist depictions of men in games...

There is no such thing. There are only power fantasies and deliberate parodies.

It doesn't matter if there is such thing or not. What will determine their actions is what that organization believes.

 

[Raziel]

Go for it. Its obviously done wonders. Look at all the changes after we labeled them for violence, adult content, etc....

 

[EyeReaper]

No, no, guys, this would actually be a good thing.

See, if we have a big shady ESRB decide which games are "sexist" or "gender-unfriendly" then we on the internet won't have to argue about it anymore! That would clear like, fifty percent of the topics here. We can finally go back to being a forum of peace, and harmony. Go back to the days of Mass effect 3 ending topics and "Is MLP too much like Dragonball"

In seriousness, this is kinda dumb. Honeslty, the only reason anyone should care if this sort of thing happened is if there was some sort of equivalent to the deadly AO rating, in which case Nintendo would totally be doomed!... in Sweden

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

Context matters, and not just the context of the situation but also the game as a whole. considering the bechdel test was mostly mocked when they started using it on movies I somehow doubt this will be a more accurate scale. not that it's a bad idea but in order to accurately measure said sexism you essentially need to play the entire game start to finish. not just the section of it with a troubling scene. you can't just watch lets play and make up your mind you need full comprehension. if thew bechdel test is seen as a good litmus test for sexism in movies I am skeptical they will be willing to do the legwork for video games unless sweden is alot more into video games than most other countries.

 

[rgrekejin]

One would think that someone who complains that other people seem to never read the article might themselves, in fact, read the article, but whatevs. Foolish consistency and hobgoblins and all that.

Ummm..yay keyword skimming? Kind of proving my point there, but okay.

Ummm... yay for flippant bloviating?

The Moviebob article clearly and the article from "The Local" are clearly discussing sexism ratings. Quoth "The local"

Sweden mulls 'sexist' video game labels

Avoiding sexism and gender stereotypes in video games produced in Sweden will become a key goal for the association, which has been given a 272,000 kronor ($36,672) grant by Sweden's government-funded innovation agency, Vinnova.
...
Dataspelsbranchen will work with several game developers to analyse how Swedish video games portray female characters and gender issues.

Speaking to The Local, project manager Anton Albiin said it was unclear at this stage if all games produced in Sweden would be given a label, or if companies developing games that promoted equality would be given some kind of certification to use for their own marketing purposes.

So, we're talking about analyzing games and giving them a label based on how they portray female characters. If that doesn't fit your definition of labeling games based on sexism, I'd sure like to know what your definition of "sexism" is, because I doubt it's one that the rest of the world shares.

 

[rgrekejin]

And gender equality is not really that subjective (I assume you meant subjective, since objective doesn't really fit with what you were saying). Are men and women treated equally in the game, or are they not? It's really not that hard of a criteria to understand if you bother to actually try and not just cry out about oppression.

It really is, though. Are men and women treated equally? Does this reinforce traditional gender stereotypes? Questions like that depend a great deal on what you consider to actually *be* traditional gender stereotypes, and what you regard as an endorsement of them. Must the reinforcement be explicit? Or is it enough to do so implicitly? If it is done implicitly, how forceful is it (setting aside for a moment the fact that implicit endorsement is in and of itself a highly subjective thing). This sort of thing is only useful for identifying really blatant, in-your-face sexism, and not the subtle, constant, insidious undercurrent of patriarchal reinforcement that I've been assured is there.

 

[rgrekejin]

I'm not sure where you're getting your information but the criteria being looked at is "gender equality," and judging whether things are equal isn't hard. As I said, are men and women treated the same and, if not, how are they treated differently. I mean, at that point it's a bit subjective since you're evaluating something, but it's not exactly hard to develop a reasonable scale for that.

Considering that in the Local article it says that they're not sure if every game will have this applied or if it will just be given out to "companies developing games that promoted equality would be given some kind of certification to use for their own marketing purposes" it might not even be that complicated.

Yes, it is that hard to determine whether things are equal. Most games have many different characters, and, believe it or not, different things happen to them during the course of games, some good, some bad. We, as third-party observers, cannot know the motivations of the characters depicted onscreen, at it's incredibly easy to ascribe unflattering motivations to characters so that we see the patterns we want to see. Equality is a meaningless metric for n=1 samples.

Take the new Tomb Raider game, and the infamous scene the internet got all up in arms about when she's taken prisoner. Was Lara treated differently in that scene than a male character would have been? We don't know, because there's no theoretical Tomb Raider game that's exactly the same, except starring a man that we can compare it too, and you can easily make an argument either way depending on what motives you wish to ascribe to both the in-game characters and the developers.

 

[rgrekejin]

Tell me, is it hard to see what happens to the characters in video games? Is it hard to note what gender they are? Is it hard to compare the situations faced by the men and women in the game? And is it hard to say "The men and women were treated differently in these ways"? From where I'm standing, none of that is subjective as its entirely down to observations.

...so all situations that happen to all characters in a given game have an equivalent that happens to another character of the opposite gender elsewhere in the game to compare it to for indexing purposes? Gosh, why haven't I ever noticed that?

Yes, it is hard to compare them, especially as most games have a single protagonist for whom we have far and away more data about "what happens to" than any other character. It may sound nice and easy to you as you're sitting here behind a keyboard, thinking in broad generalities with no specific example in mind, but in actual practice, yeah, it's going to be really hard to do.

And you'd better make sure your case is absolutely ironclad, too. For all the falsely equivalent comparisons to the ESRB, everyone involved knows that branding a game "sexist" is going to be vastly different from branding a game as "containing strong language and violence". Because most people don't mind strong language and violence, in the right circumstances, so no one cares if you stick that label on a game. It's probably not going to alter sales much either way. But (contrary to what most of the internet seems to think) most of society considers sexism to be anathema. Slapping that label on a game is going to trigger boycotts and protests in a way that "blood and use of alcohol" never will. It will, without a doubt, negatively impact sales if publicized, possibly catastrophically so. And when you're holding someone's livelihood in your hands like that, you have an obligation to behave responsibly, rather than taking the safe way out and just stamping every potentially contentious item "sexist".

 

[Jake Martinez]

I really hope that this is a translation error and Bob is just a doofus who got it wrong.

Such a system would be inherently flawed because the perception of issues like sexism is entirely subjective and can't be quantified. Why do you think we see opinions about Bayonetta 2 being all over the board from

"This is a great game with an empowering female character that I love" - Some lady gamer.

to

"This game is powered by 10 giga-hitlers full of sexism" - Some Polygon game reviewer.

It's something that no one can agree on and because of that it's impossible to quantify in any meaningful way. At best you could hope to accomplish something like, "Warning: Some people who may or may not share similar life experiences, world views and cultural touchstones as you may have found this game sexist."

Powerful stuff there guys.

A good example of what I mean from the opposite position would be to examine the laws we already have on the books in regards to sexism and racism. The reason why they are all laws is because they can be objectively proven, otherwise we would be violating people's civil rights by not enforcing laws fairly.

Also, as a slightly off topic point - The anti-male narrative that is pervading gender quality debates needs to stop. It's harmful to half the population. You personally may feel like you're doing just fine as a male, but we have an over abundance of statistical information that demonstrates

- Decrease in life expectancy from 1 year less than women, to 5 years less than women.
- A statistical increase in suicide rates to 5x that of women between the ages of 13 and 20.
- A statistical decrease across the board in educational performance.

This isn't just a side effect of girls out performing boys, this is a demonstrable and objective decrease in the welfare of boys and young men in our society. Regardless of what your gender is, if you are the parent of a young boy (or hope some day to be one) this should be something that you're concerned about.

I know absolutely nothing about the MRA movement other than I see people mocking them all the time, but I do know data when I see it and I don't particularly understand why this wouldn't be an area of concern for anyone. In fact, I became aware of this only because my wife and her friends (all late 20's to early 30's women, most of them with young children) were talking about it.

 

[Belaam]

Personally, I think this is an appalling idea, there is absolute no way, to my mind, the state should be the moral arbiter of culture in anyway,

From the article:

Dataspelsbranchen (which is an association of the Swedish games industry, not a government agency)

So it's not the state, but the games industry. I don't see the issue in adding additional tags to existing ESRB type descriptions. This game contains: Alcohol use; Language; Women as quest rewards; Graphic Violence. Seems like a reasonably simple step, and if it is kept specific, less liable to be up for debate.

That way, it's not less an arbiter of culture and more an impartial reporting of cultural elements in a game.

 

[Dagda Mor]

I'm on the progressive side of the fence, but I have to say that this is ridiculous. The only involvement that the government should have in discussions of equality should be to make sure that minorities aren't being legally suppressed by force. Hell, if they really want to do this, they should at least do it right, and I'm not convinced that they are. The Bechdel Test? Seriously?