Violence and Sexism in Video Games - History repeats itself

[sumanoskae]

What debate? In the argument of sexism in video games I see no clear sides, no agreed upon goals, and no salient ethos.

The great fallacy of the internet is that it allows us to pretend that all the people who disagree with us are therefore in agreement with one and other.

My conception of what video game sexism looks like will differ from nearly everyone else on this forum, and this is true across the board. The only "sides" in this argument are the nebulous, anonymous majorities we project onto other people in our own minds.

 

[Zhukov]

I'm not talking strict military combat situations here. Obviously, outside of fantasy settings, combat gear and such should be worn equality. This is something that I believe Gears of War does pretty well.

My point is that when it comes to practical situations, men and women do not dress all that differently.

Battledress is the one that comes up the most frequently since so many games revolve around various forms of combat but the same point applies to, say, mountaineering gear or cold weather gear.

If your characters are, for example, attending a classy dance then yeah, it makes all kinds of sense for the men and women to dress differently. I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise.

Similarly, if your characters aren't fighters or mountain climbers or whatever and just wear ordinary clothing then I don't think anyone is going to object to the men and women dressing differently. For example, in The Wolf Among Us the most prominent female character, Snow White, wears a shirt, skirt and heels. Nobody minded because she was a bureaucrat, not a fighter. There was no reason for her not to dress like that.

 

[Tilly]

They are incredibly different in that large portions of the gaming media helped fuel it this time around, whereas they stood as a steady and reliable defense against Jack Thompson.

 

[EternallyBored]

They are incredibly different in that large portions of the gaming media helped fuel it this time around, whereas they stood as a steady and reliable defense against Jack Thompson.

Without the government involved, there is little reason for a unified front against one side or the other. The violence debate for one side actually had very little to do with violence in games as a concept, even those that thought things like Mortal Kombat or GTA were trashy and over the top still defended games as an artistic medium and sided against the likes of Jack Thompson and Joe Lieberman on the principal that government shouldn't be able to treat games differently than books or movies. The articles in gaming magazines back then often sidestepped the topic of violence all together in favor of defending games as an artistic medium that should be regulated by the free market rather than the government.

I remember a lot of the articles and debates from back then, the actual topic of violence was largely secondary to the question of whether or not the government could or should treat games the same as other mediums. While the Supreme Court decision makes it extremely unlikely to happen again, if the government did decide to stick its nose into the current debate, you would likely see most people siding against intervention, similar to what happened in the 90's.

The much larger size of the medium compared to back then means there would likely be more divisiveness than the first time around, but it would be another case of most people agreeing to ignore the content of the debate (violence/sexism) in order to again answer the question of artistic integrity and games being treated differently than other artistic mediums.

 

[Satinavian]

I really don't agree to the body type complaints.

Yes, there are not a lot of female bodytypes in most games. There are not a lot of male ones either. Body types cost money because all the animations with all possible gear versions have to work. And without clipping errors and with all the possible suroundings. That is why many many games have exactly one male and one female body type, only dressed differently. Others have two of each.
In addition we get monsters, but those usually lack a lot of moves, stances and equippments to make them cheaper.

That is how game development works and it is the same for both gendders. The old original Baldurs Gate does it (one bodytype per gender that can be dressed, a couple of not dressable NPC models for both genders) the same way as the nex XCOM2 (lots of customisation, but only one body type per gender).

As for "How realistic is the body type used", female models tend to get a far more realistic approach than male models. While breasts tend to be slightly big, overall women are portrayed pretty average, where men look like unrealistic walking hulks.
Again, look at XCOM2 (or XCOM EU, which is even worse) : The female soldiers look like a lot of people i see everyday in transit. The male soldiers don't. They look like bodybuilders. (For XCOM EU borderline unrealistic carricatures)

And that is not only XCOM (but XCOM is a good example because they invested a lot of work in how thier soldiers look), it is pretty common that the male characters have the unrealistic over the top build while the female characters are while certainly good-looking, still pretty realistic.

If a game has to use the same body for everything, wouldn't it be a better idea to use something more average as basis ? Well, seems like that is only possible for female Characters.


Overall i would like more diverse builds in games, but as it is really a cost factor, i don't have high hopes.

 

[ErrrorWayz]

Not really, the only danger, as I saw it, with the various "-ism" debates was that a very small minority was potentially getting undue precedence because their complaints or viewpoints were picked up by an entirely uncritical (in fact, as far as I could tell the online gaming media was largely composed of the small minority) and presented as open minded heroes vs repressive bullies, which could cause companies to alter their stance or game due to PR disaster potential. This seems unfair.

There is nothing inherently wrong with claiming something is "sexist", or whatever, if you feel it to be the case but equally, I don't think the average "gamer" really cares whether a game features a woman, man, anthropomorphised shoe or gay dragon so long as it's good and nor should they be required to care.

The violence thing was much more structures and dangerous, it actually had legal implications.

 

[Something Amyss]

The much larger size of the medium compared to back then means there would likely be more divisiveness than the first time around, but it would be another case of most people agreeing to ignore the content of the debate (violence/sexism) in order to again answer the question of artistic integrity and games being treated differently than other artistic mediums.

I imagine the size of the industry is very likely an insulator against any sort of systemic attack, though.

It happens outside of games too. There was a pill being heralded as a female Viagra, and when feminists started pointing their fingers at the FDA for being sexist for not giving women an equal playing field on sexual grounds, they approved it. The problem was, there was still some considerable health risks with it while not actually helping a woman's sexual encounters by any significant margin. It was on the market for 6-8 months before people started looking at it again for being ineffective and possibly dangerous.

Of course, that's only part of the story. Not only wasn't it just feminists who looked at the drug's approval (unless you're Thunderf00t or Sargon of A-Fraud), and the list of side effects was actually brought up at the time--and not as a blow against.

Yeah, I mean, Addyi increased your chance of dizziness or sleepless nights. Let's compare that to early erectile treatments, which increased risk of...heart attack and stroke...whoops. Best sweep that under the rug, lest someone think there might be something more to this than "feminists" complaining. Common side effects of Addyi are not much different than and fewer than a lot of the "safe" erectile medications.

That was actually kind of the point. If this isn't safe enough for approval, then pretty much any boner pill should be off the market as well.

Secondly, the people clamoring for equality and whatnot and the people ignore female-lead games are not necessarily the same individuals.

Furthermore, people aren't necessarily ignoring female leads. I mean, Remember Me had to fight for a publisher, it was poorly promoted, and it simply wasn't good (protip: if you're going to name your game Remember Me, try to make it something other than forgettable). You could argue that it was because it wasn't good that it had to fight, but The Last of Us had to fight with a female co-protagonist, as well, and that one's critically acclaimed. Tomb Raider 2013 sold 7 million copies, not counting PC digital sales. These aren't CoD numbers, but they're good for most of the rest of the market. The first Arkham Asylum sold more, but not by much.

Meanwhile, Call of Duty is still selling after adding women. Battlefront has playable female characters, and it met its sales predictions. Halo? Well, I don't know about Halo. But it seems like there might be something other than the female leads at play here. One of those things may be marketing. It's almost like...when you take a hot game and put women in it...it's still a hot game. But if you make a game with women and refuse to promote it or drag your feet, the game doesn't sell.