KingDragonlord said:
Nobody is saying you don't exist and while I glossed over a little of this thread I didn't see one "girls are dudes" post. Certainly not the OP. In fact, the OP has posted the most solid data I've seen in any forum thread anywhere concerned with this topic.
Its funny you say you want change. A common defense I hear is "nobody is trying to take away your games." Well nobody is saying you can't play these games but if you show up to the table and then say "You have to change this game because I don't like it" you're going to get some complaints from the people who actually like the game as it is.
Why not, instead of saying that every game needs to be broadly inclusive, allow games to appeal to niche interests? Let people who want their adolescent power fantasy have it (there is no shame in power fantasies in video games). Let people who want something else, something that represents them and their interests more, have it.
See I get the impression that the feminist culture critic crowd just plain wants to stamp out anything they don't like. There's a good series of articles by Cathy Young to put this in perspective. The best coverage I've seen so far.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/12/gamergate-part-i-sex-lies-and-gender-gam/1
http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/22/gamergate-part-2-videogames-meet-feminis
http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/01/misandry-in-the-gamergate-controversy
funny thing too, it includes another group of women that people say don't exist or are actually men. But this time its feminists making those claims.
Pardon me for butting in, and going on a bit of a rant!
While I've not seen "girls don't exist" in these arguments (Though it's a common MMO joke, and was a common gaming meme in general), I don't think I've seen ANYONE say
Why not, instead of saying that every game needs to be broadly inclusive,
I'd like more people to understand that there'll NEVER be that level of control over the gaming industry because there's no force in the world strong enough to censor the world of gaming because games are made internationally. There just isn't a group that's that strong, or cares that much. I can't think of a thing in the world regulated that strongly, and there's stuff the stodgy world deems more important than videogames that'd get censored that much first.
Not only are people not going to take away games, people CAN'T, in short.
But that's just my opinion. I'd be shocked if it did happen.
Yeah, Australia has a censorship thing IIRC, and there's some censorship in other countries, but it's not the same censorship behind it all, nor is it one force working to do this. Regardless, we still have Mass Effect (Banned in one country because of Lesbianism, IIRC), Saints Row 4 (Austrailia nailed it because of the anal probe IIRC), GTAV, and a lot of other games that are intact elsewhere, hence no force in the world having enough power to control games world wide.
People have tried to do the censorship thing in the U.E., Jack Thompson being the only person I can recall actually pursuing it, and being vocal about it, but he certainly failed.
And, yes, I've watched Anita's videos. She's not pushing for it, as far as I can tell, just asking, which is something we all do in videogames, be it a weapon to be stronger, not nerfed, character designs, features, etc.
There won't be checklists, because if people don't have the power to censor gaming that much, they don't have the power to tell the industry what they can, or can't do. Even when people try to be PC (See U.S. 90's cartoons), they don't really, and it'll certainly burn out aside from fringe censorship like pokemon (A few pokemon were altered in color like Jynx, and James with boobs were edited out of the cartoon) and stuff I'd think's not as dire as people think will happen.
Every side's going to have extremists. And every side's going to have the vast majority of non-extremists on the side of their extremists that won't police the extremists at all, not even a "HEY! WHOA! You're going too far there!" when they see such stuff, but believing that the extremists are the majority, speak for everyone, and/or are the face of a movement is something we should remember not to do.
I'll be honest here, I don't follow gamer gate, and I don't really want to. I don't have much details in what it's about (nor do I really want any because there'll always be a bias in the delivery of this information if the person cares about the subject, IMO), but I'd like to think I have enough understanding of the way the world works that I don't really need to since this topic isn't revolving around it.
Where I stand, personally, I just want more diversity in gaming protagonists that have their own story (which excludes create a character stuff, which I do appreciate greatly, but is no stand in). Men, women, LGBT, PoC, straight, I don't want anything obscenely rare, here, which is basically everything but the seemingly default straight white man. That's it, really.
NPCs, people you play temporarily, and so forth just don't mean as much to me.
Hell, NPCs either don't mean anything to me, or are cool enough that I resent not being able to play them, and will likely never get to.
Playing a person temporarily just makes me wanna save before I can, and just replay that section over, and over again.
Character creation forces the script to be unisex by and large, so there's not a whole lot of one gender reacting differently than the other might have, but it's something.
We can have our fan service, our Dead or Alives, our Call of Duties, and everything we already have, but it'd be nice if the industry tried to appeal to more people than they do, and understood that it's often not the fault of the female protagonist (or anyone else other than a straight white male) that a game fails, rather the game around said protagonist. If it were the fault of the protagonist, then straight white males should've been the first to get the bad rep a long time ago, and likely axed since there's been millions of games starring them, and more failed than not. Hell, straight white male isn't really "safe" since it's certainly no guarantee a game will do well. It's not all men can write since pretty much every last female character we have in games were written by men.
I'd like to see change. I'd like to think it's happening, slowly, but we aren't there yet.
