Yeah because you have been the complete picture of an equalist in the other posts I have seen you make.../sarcasm.Tippy said:
Tropes vs. Women Protagonists
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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No I'm not, I even agreed that making men move on planes was ridiculous. Don't just make things up -.-Tippy said:
Of course I take it personally I'm a woman aren't I. You are talking about my gender. If I started saying bad things about all men I'm sure you would take that personally too.
Leave it be, he's not worth arguing with.Moonlight Butterfly said:
But I will agree with just *one* of his points, which is that things will take time to change, and they are slowly changing. Game devs, even if overwhelmingly male, are slowly starting to grasp what embodies a decent female lead (or even support) character. Females are very slowly getting more interested in game development, even if most programming/3D design classes these days seem to be so male-dominated.
So relax, play your favorite titles and give it time...no battle against discrimination has EVER ended overnight.
Before you remind us that you're still going to complain and you still have the right to complain, remember that is the entire point of this article/thread. It's good to see a woman voice her feelings because as the ending line of the original artical said, this topic needs more women speaking up about it.
So why not relax a bit and wait for other females to say what they must say about it? The internet is all about anyonimity, but in cases like these it's not a bad idea just to voice people's gender when they make a post so we can see where they're coming from. It helps add perspective so you don't end up being the last and only woman battling it out in these threads all the time.
I'm a guy ^_^
Hmm, that could be a weakness especially on the internet, something people like Tippy could easily exploit.Moonlight Butterfly said:
I'm personally impossible to offend. Talk shit about my gender, my race, my looks, etc all day long, it will be virtually impossible to get me reacting aggressively or even taking the insults on a personal level. I will simply laugh and not bother responding, it wouldn't be worth my energy. Especially words I read on the internet, lol. Really, what is the point of taking any of these discussions to a personal level?
It's just the fact that even if you complain about anything sexism related in games you get people jumping down your throat.
The majority of people recognise that there is a problem both sides of the screen so why is it so frowned upon to draw attention to it as Ms Sarkeesian has done.
It's this knee jerk reaction that bothers me, as if calling some portrayals of women sexist is some how shaming the male gamer and calling him sexist by proxy when that isn't true at all. I like playing Mario games and enjoy them but I would still say that Princess Peach is a pretty outdated character trope. So I like the game but recognise there is a problem at the same time that's all we are asking.
The majority of people recognise that there is a problem both sides of the screen so why is it so frowned upon to draw attention to it as Ms Sarkeesian has done.
It's this knee jerk reaction that bothers me, as if calling some portrayals of women sexist is some how shaming the male gamer and calling him sexist by proxy when that isn't true at all. I like playing Mario games and enjoy them but I would still say that Princess Peach is a pretty outdated character trope. So I like the game but recognise there is a problem at the same time that's all we are asking.
"Treated like dirt" - so, there are games promoting female genital mutilation, sex slavery, decrying emancipation and women's right to education, denying suffrage, glorifying domestic abuse and rape...?Moonlight Butterfly said:
No? Not one? What's that you say, they depict hot women disproportionately more than they do intelligent women? Oh wow, ghastly.
I mean, excuse me, but except for criticizing that male sexual fantasies are represented more than female ones, an entirely reasonable situation given that most game designers can't make a game that titillates women, what else is so damaging about the depiction of women in gaming? It's exclusionary and limiting to the medium? Yes, yes it is. Will that be amended with the influx of female designers and dialogue like the one in this thread? Yes, yes it will.
Is it inherently damaging that hot vapid chicks are depicted in gaming in any amount? No, no it's not. For those looking for more sophisticated stories, there will always be better games, with both male and female characters of sufficient depth (and frankly, today's developed non-meathead male characters don't outnumber good female characters by that much). The rest will inevitably be cheescake, preferably pandering in equal measure to horny women and horny men. Pretending like objectification only goes one way, with leering men being "creepy and dangerous" while no woman ever swoons over anyone, and if she does, it's "quaint, cute and/or pathetic" - that's just cretinous. Women are no more likely to be objects of sexual violence than men are, and the proliferation of mass media, internet porn and jiggle physics hasn't resulted in an epidemic of out-of-control men demanding their vapid brainless woman-meat. While I wholeheartedly welcome the day when women will have an abundance of both well-written female protagonists and boy-toys to fawn over, I don't think it's anyone's right to say Bayonetta is insensitive and shouldn't exist - the claim that she "reinforces primitive and dangerous male drives" can fuck right off for having no basis in empirical evidence.
Just because it's not the biggest problem women face doesn't mean it shouldn't be spoken about. I'm pretty sure women are more likely to face sexual violence than men though. Cheesecake is only part of the problem, and the problem with that is that's it's disrespectful and demeaning (Could you take Nathan Drake seriously if he did the whole game oiled up in a speedo and occasionally flexed and winked at the camera?) but there is also the problem of other stereotypes like the damsel in distress.Seneschal said:
People are just more complex than that. There's no reason women should be shoehorned into certain character types any more than male characters should be 30 something brown haired and interchangeable.
And I'm afraid "it's disrespectful" just doesn't cut it as a reason for even the slightest social change, let alone censorship. I can claim that religious people are "disrespectful" of my atheism, and we should purge any mention of non-believers being roasted by Satan because it depicts me in a negative light.Moonlight Butterfly said:
However, that doesn't concern me. It has no bearing on my life until Christians start petitioning the state to infringe on my rights because of my atheism. And since cheescake and fanservice doesn't seem to have negative effects on women in itself, judging by crime statistics, women object to it for no other reason than "it makes them uncomfortable". Now, I can only speculate as to why that is, and perhaps it's instinctual - in the context of evolution, a woman took a much bigger risk with any pregnancy, she had to invest a lot of time and energy, and therefore she looked for the best mate available; being leered at by everyone was not in her interest. However, what women instinctually feel in regards to pandering and objectification in media should have no bearing on whether it has actual, measurable negative effects on men's attitudes towards women, which have only improved and become more egalitarian with the development of technology and the mass media, therefore proving women's instincts hopelessly outdated and left-overs from a more hominid era.
And if you think a hard-wired limbic reaction, or a sentimental appeal to some Victorian notion of "decency" is enough to actually ban something from being depicted in art, despite overwhelming evidence that it's completely innocuous in any real-world context, then you are the dangerous and limiting factor here. I thought we had this covered, that women wanted equal representation and inclusion, not actual say over what the opposite sex gets to see and play.
Why do you need female characters to be nothing but sex objects. I see you are a fan of Korra what is the problem with having more characters like her?Seneschal said:
I don't understand why people NEED over sexualised characters in games. Don't you have porn. I mean like I said you couldn't take a male character seriously if he spent the whole time dressed and acting like a male stripper so why do you expect women to put up with it?
It's this ridiculous knee jerk reaction that I;m talking about NO ONE is asking for things to be outright banned no one is saying video game characters can't be sexy. I'm just sick of female characters being portrayed as there for the men to ogle rather than characters like Korra or Femshep who are both attractive AND appropriate for the genre they are in but who are characters in their own right and not defined primarily by 'sexy' or 'female'.
I've said none of the things you attribute to me. It's even unfair that you assume that I'm heterosexual, and that I'm coming from a "boy that doesn't want his unfairly-gained toys taken away", when I'm very definitely approaching this from a rational perspective. Trust me, I'd like nothing more than to see gaming get a good dose of oiled-up birthday-suit Nathan Drake, and having a lot more characters like Korra would be amazing, and is hopefully the direction we are headed in. However, I see no persuasive reason as to why straight-male sexual fantasies should be demonized and done away with entirely. We currently ridicule them for being so pervasive, exaggerated, and simplistic that they make developers look like lazy, unsophisticated smut-peddlers -- but, again, that's an issue of volume, of diversity, and of inclusion, not an outright condemnation of men oogling fictional women.Moonlight Butterfly said:
And why should it be? You act as if you're the recipient of the objectification, but you're not! And you fail to address my question - where is the harm? Where is the conclusive evidence that male sexual fantasies are in themselves harmful to women? You've made it very clear that they don't appeal to you and, believe me, I don't find DoA Beach Volleyball any more palatable than you do, and it's my right to not buy or support the game; what isn't my right, however, is to tell other people how they should feel about it -- that would be disrespectful and imposing of me.
And if you feel uneasy at the very thought of a guy finding, involuntarily, mind you, a fictional woman attractive, that is between you and you sense of self-worth. Unless you can give a decisive reason as to why other people's choice of entertainment affects society negatively, then all you rest on is you own feeling. And really, unless a form of expression spreads falsehoods and slander, or promotes hate and illegal activities, restricting it, especially over the subjective indignation of someone at whom it wasn't even targeted, is just unethical.
Depending on what region they come from, they are. There are no pastey, chubby or too skinny nerds that are protagonists, and when they do show up they're for comic relief. The only chunky, out of shape protagonist I can think at the moment of would be bald max payne.Shamus Young said:
Male protagonists in games are unrealistic (and many times just as one-dimensional or without personality), or just as you put it... like fabio, beiber, and cullen. They aren't in thongs, but they are sexualized in a "perfect male" image, wether buff with muscles showing, grizzled and badass with chistled features, or femmy... like in JRPGs. And women DO find them all very attractive.
http://www.gamefront.com/the-hunkiest-heroes-in-video-games-too-bad-there-arent-enough-of-them/
The root of all of this in video games has spilled over from other mediums, and thats "men enjoying sexually appealing women in fantasy bugs me and it's wrong."
Some music:mfeff said:
Ufff, sorry man that i havent been here in a while, the MOTHER of the PC went caput and had to use an old PC with Windows 98........without DVD reader for my backups.......nor USB drivers.....nor Internet.......the nightmares still haunt me to this day.
Fortunatelly i managed to use a 56K modem to AT LEAST download an executable that allows me to run XP crap on Win98 and THEN use Firefox and everything else (Internet Explorer 6 is a *****)
Now, on to the post in question:
The funny thing is that, if she had enough money to afford an studio, then eventually she could have achieved her goal if she keept the ad revenue. After all, what was the hurry in having that money?.
But no matter what thing she was going to "analize" (sarcastic quotes), be videogames or tv series or pop music that uses sexism to drive a point....only to be marked as sexism anyway regardless of the context, she was going to get flack no matter what just like everyone else on the Internet who tries to get money from Kickstarters (JewWario and The Angry Video Game Nerd) What makes her "fault" more irratating is that, at least for those 2 guys over there, their "thing" or profesion is to be comedians and that is something subjective, one might not like what they do but that is all they got; She in the other hand is supposed to be some one who is an expert with academic knowledge and yet all she offers is so dry that may as well not try, and she expects money from it.......yeah, why is it surpricing again??
If i go to see a doctor that i have never seen before, in the middle of nowhere, and whose consultory has more Diesel smell and less sanitary standards than a Truck Driver convention, then i have no one to blame but myself when i see that my fucking organs are gone and die for it. But when it is my doctor friend who i know forever and is a well know profesional and I STILL end up with my organs gone, then this is a betrayal on HIS part. I trusted the doctor as a profesional and friend and failed in both cases with a single action.
You are unable to grasp the concept of "Suppose it happened, what does it mean to you?".........again. That is why i also used the "No True Scottman" trope, to see under what circunstance one would feel cheated that what one is looking at is just someone with a diferent body. Doesnt matter if happened or not, the point is the reaction to such event and analize objectively.Zachary Amaranth said:
In fact, lets take this up to eleven, suppose that the most vocal feminist in the world, who is the most compasionate person and reasonable person ever, is actually a male that went under an operation to make himself look and talk like a woman. What does it mean for everyone from the feminist group who wasnt aware of this?
On the contrary, nothing is more honest than fun and:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SincerestFormOfFlattery
Say, wasnt i doing exactly as you did? going on the extreme that gamers ARENT the default responsibles for the Anita fiasco without any evidence, just as much as you did the same by saying that gamers ARE the responsibles without any evidence. Hell, the lack of evidence is so histerical that i could just say: "Yes, they were gamers, but FEMALE GAMERS all of them, not a single male"
Where is the fun in flat out telling you that you are doing just as wrong as i do with your arguments? i did, however, make sure to tell you to notice that some of the people here that were arguing with you already noted the painfully obvious:
And lo and behold, after that they flat out tell you what is wrong with the whole argument of yours and you didnt even continued the converzation since 19 September 2012 10:31 pm.
runic knight said:
How convenient that you call ME passive-agresive, the concept of "i have a life" is too alien for you? you didnt even tried to answer the other more SOLID facts of her fucking up the deadline and not giving a single video for the tropes she was going to "analize". Her Twiters message dont count because for that you dont need all that money and the Kickstarter mentioned that she needed that to make the videos in the first place.
Your response? "You make it sound like a blood pact or something" Well, it was like that, and everyone on the Internet is the witness. What is the counter argument or yours? you are being condecendent to me and the other people. Yeah right, i am not the person evading the discucion.
How can i attack something that doesnt exist in the first place? If she didnt make the claim of ICO being sexist then our converzation and the detailed exposition about how the theme of the game is about anything BUT that, wouldnt have been made in the first place.
Stating that you respect the opinions of Shaun is meaningless, specially if we are writing this in the forum section of HIS article where he can check it out regulary.
By the way, your argument about this quote from Shaun:
Falls flat on his face just like the "non-sexism" and "sexism to the Nth degree" issue. In both cases, you will NOT know it when you see it, just like how Movie Bob couldnt see the obvious sexism of Metroid Other M. It had to be someone on TvTropes in its spare time that had to explain in detail why that game is sexism in Eldrich Abomination form.Zachary Amaranth said:
....
How it DOESNT answer the claim of sexism? care to provide an explanation? oh so mighty "yay or nay" giver? with less than 3 letters please (as always)
1)Anita says ICO is sexist, with by itself implies that the games is against women representation.
2)I look objectively at the game and wrote a post that saids that it is meaningless if they are a boy/man and a girl/woman since the theme is survival by unity from the forces of the big uncaring universe.
3)You said that it doesnt answer that claim and dont provide further explanation of why.
4)???
5)PROFIT
Well, if you dont like wall of text, then that answers why you didnt answer rubik knight' wall of text and..........wait a second, didnt you just said before that TEXT is YOUR speciallity? that you work better with text because its your job? and yet, not a single answer you have given makes your claim look valid. No depth, no exposition, no NOTHING.
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You are useless to us.
You know? i have been thinking and...
A dangerous past time
I know, right? but we keep talking about the female protagonist without taking into account how is sexism taken into account when you have a villain that the hero must overcome and is the Anti-Thesis of it?
What happens when the villain is a Pulp Villain? a villain that was made INTENTIONALLY to represent the worst in us. A machine that is so much like us, so human....that its inhuman.
Enter SHODAN from System Shock 2:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/08/12/the-girl-who-wanted-to-be-god/
And yes, she was made intentionally sexist.
Now.....does it work? i mean, if the sexism is used to have a point then i am sure it can be forgiven. Otherwise, if we just censor without any proper reason "just because it's there" then things can go to shit pretty fast.
Take for example the censorship of the German version of "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream". The games of AM involve demostrating that humans are a bunch of bastards, and among them there is NIMDOK, a Jew scientist that worked willingly with the Nazis for his own benefit and now seeks redeptiom for his actions. Unfortunatelly, that mission was CUT completelly without replacing the lines or anything and made impossible to get the true ending of the game, nor we see him achieving peace with himself.
I use SHODAN here because its the most memorable female villain ever even if technically she is a machine. We keep refering as HER and not as IT, both IN the game and OUTSIDE it. But probably the people here doesnt remember the game, probably not even Shaun and his friends on Spoiler Warning.
A dangerous past time
I know, right? but we keep talking about the female protagonist without taking into account how is sexism taken into account when you have a villain that the hero must overcome and is the Anti-Thesis of it?
What happens when the villain is a Pulp Villain? a villain that was made INTENTIONALLY to represent the worst in us. A machine that is so much like us, so human....that its inhuman.
Enter SHODAN from System Shock 2:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/08/12/the-girl-who-wanted-to-be-god/
And yes, she was made intentionally sexist.
Now.....does it work? i mean, if the sexism is used to have a point then i am sure it can be forgiven. Otherwise, if we just censor without any proper reason "just because it's there" then things can go to shit pretty fast.
Take for example the censorship of the German version of "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream". The games of AM involve demostrating that humans are a bunch of bastards, and among them there is NIMDOK, a Jew scientist that worked willingly with the Nazis for his own benefit and now seeks redeptiom for his actions. Unfortunatelly, that mission was CUT completelly without replacing the lines or anything and made impossible to get the true ending of the game, nor we see him achieving peace with himself.
I use SHODAN here because its the most memorable female villain ever even if technically she is a machine. We keep refering as HER and not as IT, both IN the game and OUTSIDE it. But probably the people here doesnt remember the game, probably not even Shaun and his friends on Spoiler Warning.
Ah, sorry for your troubles. In professional engineering we use a system many times referred to as OOAD or OO E/D/ED, which is simply object oriented (analysis) design, or ''event driven (computer lingo)/Engineering design (lots of spins on the concept). What this boils down to is sitting down with a customer/problem and hashing out what problem the customer/situation needs solved and how a solution or solution path will look like/behave.DioWallachia said:
We rapid prototype the thing, and present back some kind or marginally working model just to be sure that the product is in line with the type of phenotype that the customer is looking for.
So design is normally "to" something. In this case the object and that object is dictate of the orientation of the build. The engineering is the employment of the known methodological problem solving techniques to arrive at that object.
The key as it relates to "game design" is that there is a bit of conflagration between "design" and "art". Which often times are exclusive of each other.
My problem with A.S. is that she approached the subject like many an uniformed arts person does (outside looking in) that design to an object is emblematic of the art or cultural operands of the creators. It's not, it's made for a customer normally to a customer specification, and in AAA development that customer is often times a publisher, or in cohort with a marketing department. It's a comment perhaps on the customer but not the creators, she seemed to make it out to be that it is the creators.
If the intended or designed to spec. customers are a demographic of men (which is a safe bet it is) then the problem being discussed is not the product for'se it is the audience that, THAT product is intended for.
Now some stuff in ages past where made by people who where just making a thing to their own particular notion of what was good or would be good. There are a lot of games that are like this ranging from FPS to straight up porn games... these come much closer to artistic expression, or experimentation than they do rock solid design methodology... but in that, where is the critique?
If someone makes a porn game for themselves as a form of expression, all I may really fall back on was the execution of the code work, not really the expression itself. It's not my place, and I do not think it is anyone else's place either.
But people judge, cause they are people... this website is a perfect example of stone tossing as any other. It happens.
Briefly, not the biggest fan of death or speed metal, but I try to be aware that those who are probably have a better notion of not only what is "good" and "bad" within that genre, but how a live performance is to be judged. Tend to refer to this as "approaching a subject on that subjects terms".
We talked about the Alien Res. scene... not the biggest fan of that scene, not really trying to interpret it, but was the actress performance convincing? I think so. So the art there appears to be in the actress skill not really in the subject of the medium presented.
So that all said, man... (I guess your a dude) hehe, I am right there with you, looked like some hypo-agency nonsense to me, with so little respect paid to the work that is involved in creation of material that I really had to "think" about not becoming reactive to the rubbish.
Not everybody held their indignation, but hey, that's on them. Be surprised how much hate speech is actually covered under the first amendment. It's murky in a way because there are many points of overlap between design and art, between the object being created and the customer that it is being created for.
Funny, and as a bit of an aside, I found this post by Shamus to be sort of quixotic... in that he took 2 pages to basically conclude, "chicks should work it out with chicks".
Posted this before thought I would leave it here again:
"I don't think even Anita Sarkeesian agrees with Anita Sarkeesian" -girlwriteswhat
Now I'm not sure whether or not it's been mentioned (if it did, I missed it) but one of the very few female protagonists I've encountered in video games who hasn't been sexualized in any way would be Maya from Septerra Core. As I recall, she doesn't have any kind of romantic subplot during the course of the game and tends to keep herself covered up from head to toe because she lives in a desert. And while all other party members follow her for their own personal reasons, ranging from friendship all the way to respect, not one of them does so because "if he's going to stare at someone's butt all day it might as well be that one".
Mind you, the game isn't perfect in its regard to its treatment of female characters and while the gender ratio is pretty balanced (3 guys, 3 girls, two robots and one mutant whose gender isn't really elaborated on) the weakest characters are the females, a particularly egregious example being Led, the cute mechanic girl in a far too-short tank top who wields a comically oversized monkey wrench as her weapon. You'd think that someone with robotic legs could at least win a kicking competition, but the only way she's really useful in combat is when her love interest is around, since this opens up their combo attacks. Her love interest being one of, if not the, best magic user available to you.
Mind you, the game isn't perfect in its regard to its treatment of female characters and while the gender ratio is pretty balanced (3 guys, 3 girls, two robots and one mutant whose gender isn't really elaborated on) the weakest characters are the females, a particularly egregious example being Led, the cute mechanic girl in a far too-short tank top who wields a comically oversized monkey wrench as her weapon. You'd think that someone with robotic legs could at least win a kicking competition, but the only way she's really useful in combat is when her love interest is around, since this opens up their combo attacks. Her love interest being one of, if not the, best magic user available to you.
But do you not think oiled up Nathan Drake would be ridiculous and inappropriate and make the character look stupid?Seneschal said:
That's the point I'm trying to make. The thing is when women see over sexualised female characters we can't take them seriously as a character because all we see is 'Oh she's there for the guys to ogle'
Korra is a great example of a character who is attractive but that isn't the centre of her character. She is brave, hotheaded, and sometimes foolish. She's a character and 'sexy' isn't her main 'selling point'. Even Asami who is more conventionally sexy has more than just her looks to go on. They both have faults and good things about them. The same with Katara, Toph, Azula etc. Their character is something that comes first over the eye candy for guys. The way they dress is rooted in who they are.
I mean I could never see someone with Chun Li's personality dressing like she does in Street Fighter 2 (unless that's her special 'revenge dress'
) but I could see her dressing like she does in Alpha. The way a character looks and comports themselves is very important in a visual medium.I hope you see what I'm trying to get at beyond 'sexy is bad mkay'
Please stop linking that video it's a load of sexist crap. She basically says that women can't do anything for themselves and just leech off men. Hypoagency isn't even a word, she just made it up. It's pretty horrific to me that modern men believe this stuff.mfeff said:
It was great to see this article, particularly the final paragraph. I had been considering leaving a post about how we often spend too much time talking about what went wrong with female characters, rather than what developers should be doing with them instead. I strongly feel that until someone comes out with a statement about female characters that is not, "You're doing it wrong again", we'll continue to see games that try and fail to create impressive female characters.
Furthermore, I feel that offering actual suggestions will silence a number of the said murlocs who seem to believe that these discussions are about how to steal games from men by forcing them to pander only to women. If a clever feminist with bright ideas stepped forward and announced her vision for women in video games, that would leave no room for the detractors to come up with their own "feminist agendas" to stick into the mouths of their straw feminists.
Furthermore, I feel that offering actual suggestions will silence a number of the said murlocs who seem to believe that these discussions are about how to steal games from men by forcing them to pander only to women. If a clever feminist with bright ideas stepped forward and announced her vision for women in video games, that would leave no room for the detractors to come up with their own "feminist agendas" to stick into the mouths of their straw feminists.
For the first part of that false statement, the National Crime Victim Survey(2010) says:Seneschal said:
The link to the survey is http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/cv10.txtNCVS said:
For the remainder, a quick look at a few of the posts from Manboobz or its boobroll [http://manboobz.com/] show aggravatingly large groups of men demanding pretty much what you said.
Citation needed. The number of women SCA fighters seems to suggest that there are quite a few women who's power fantasies are less "manipulate things from the shadows" and more "stabby stabby!"rembrandtqeinstein said: