Violence in games vs Sexism in games?

[Something Amyss]

Do people argue that? The "playing sexist games makes people mistreat women"?

Anita Sarkeesian. Or, rather, the strawman version of her that opponents quote, insists this all the time.

But, when sexism is discussed in games, many say it's not the same thing or "false equivalence".

Because it is. When you see behaviour in a video game that is within social norms (and sexism still largely is), it will have a different impact than one that we don't accept as normal. Arguably, there is no harm provided from violence because people know that shooting people is bad. To the contrary, people justify sexism and come up with all sorts of different ways to insist it's not sexism or somehow the woman's fault.

Arguably, anyway.

The problem is, you're still arguing two different things and trying to equate them.

What it boils down to is stylised female "beaty" vs Stylised Male "beauty" and the rights and wrongs of each.

Except that's trying to pretend all things are equal. Women in media tend to be marketed to men. Men in media, particularly the types given as counter-examples, tend to be marketed to....Men. The He-Man type, for example, is more a boy's fantasy than a girl's wet dream (speaking generally, because neither sex is a homogenous unit). There's little point in the pretense that "manservice" is done with women in mind. And when women do get actual consideration, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I played "Mount your friends" and "My ex boyfriend the Space Tyrant a gay adventure game" no really. You know what I discovered though (and no not a suppressed sexuality) that it's possible to get past that point and enjoy the game. What I found was if I looked for it then it annoyed me because I was seeing it however once I went "Ok I'm just going to play and enjoy this game" suddenly I wasn't seeing it in my face and I was able to simply enjoy the game.

A major foundational difference being it's absolutely your choice. That's like telling a starving person to shut up because you dieted once and it wasn't that bad.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah, arguing who's more on fire whilst your house burns isn't exactly a good use of time.

Dealing with the one who's lighting the house on fire probably is a good use of time, however, and that's part of the analogy. Men are the ones with the gasoline and matches in this analogy. So when a guy burns down his own house, is he equally the victim as someone whose house was burned down by someone else?

 

[The Lunatic]

Yeah, arguing who's more on fire whilst your house burns isn't exactly a good use of time.

Dealing with the one who's lighting the house on fire probably is a good use of time, however, and that's part of the analogy. Men are the ones with the gasoline and matches in this analogy. So when a guy burns down his own house, is he equally the victim as someone whose house was burned down by someone else?

Yes, because there are absolutely no women in the game industry.

Entirely male profession, no females are ever involved in any of these games people are talking about.

All the fault of men.

 

[Uhura]

How the fuck are Kratos and Geralt male power fantasies? Maybe I'm missing something, but honestly, my aspiration in life is not to become a creepy dude with dead looking skin and weird tattoos. Geralt is basically just some guy who gets manipulated and pushed around all the time - he's a good fighter but the majority of the time he's just a pawn, something you'd know if you spent more than a few hours playing it. I'm sure lots of men love to play The Witcher and fill his shoes but its certainly not a power thing.

The point of power fantasy is not necessarily to be something you aspire to be in your everyday life. James Bond is another character who is commonly referred to as a power fantasy. While people fantasize about being suave, smart and attractive agents, I don't know many who would like to IRL have a career where they constantly murder other people, have 50% of their girlfriends/sex partners kidnapped and/or murdered (dipped in gold or shot dead for example), have their wife murdered and being therefore unable to have anything that resembles a normal life or relationships. The fantasy is about power, being powerful enough to defeat your foes and have hot women desire you.

Similarly, there isn't just one power fantasy all men subscribe to. There are several different variations of the power fantasy (like Kratos, Bond, super heroes etc.) and not all of them are grunting brutes. Similarly most people are able to recognize that the 'perky cheerleader' is a common sex fantasy even if they are not attracted to that type of fantasy themselves. Because there is also variation in sex fantasies. Those sex fantasies also sometimes feature women who guys wouldn't really want to be in a relationship with IRL (just like power fantasies can be characters guys wouldn't want to be IRL).

And its not that no men have "power fantasies" about being Kratos (because some men do). Not anywhere near all of them though, just like SOME women find him attractive, but not all of them. Your argument works both ways.

So to to you those are equally rare phenomenons? Media that is aimed predominantly to women (romantic comedies, romance books etc.) has very few men in them who look like Kratos.
Whereas a considerable amount of male oriented media stars men who look like similar to Kratos (muscle wise, or because they too look enraged/scowling).

Spoiler

Big muscly dudes doing shit and blowing things up is a pretty common thing in male oriented entertainment.

 

[WindKnight]

And what about the publishers who have no problem excluding female gamers with such a tight restriction, but bend over backwards to cater for male gamers with such restrictions? We've had devs being told they cant have a female main character and actively forced into making it male, and again, Remember Me had a very hard time finding a publisher because they wouldn't lose the female main character.

Well since they're business partners who invest millions i think it's normal they can pressure the devs to make the more profitable choices? The publishers don't care about catering to all types of consumers equally, and thankfully otherwise they'd all be bankrupt, they care about the project actually making (a lot of) money.

And that's why i'm a great proponent of: voting with your wallet.

Yeah, I mean Electronic Arts has been making such great business decisions of late, and making the best decisions ever with the directions they've given their studios for their IP. And Activision? Their so canny and on the ball with what the market wants they did their best to kill the Modern Warfare franchise before it even began because all the big games at the time were world war 2 shooters, and drove the guitar hero franchise into the ground with over-saturation.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Yeah, I mean Electronic Arts has been making such great business decisions of late, and making the best decisions ever with the directions they've given their studios for their IP. And Activision? Their so canny and on the ball with what the market wants they did their best to kill the Modern Warfare franchise before it even began because all the big games at the time were world war 2 shooters, and drove the guitar hero franchise into the ground with over-saturation.

Remember, when the decision is all about maintaining the status quo and antiquated gender roles/representation it is sound business practice and a sign of wise leadership and strong focus on the consumer. When the issue is DRM, always-online or "dumbing down" of games it is shitty business practice perpetuated by publishers that lack leadership and are out of touch with reality.

Because it can't just be a case of publishers being equally inept in both cases... Not when it is us emotional, pushy women wanting more representation.

 

[WindKnight]

Basicly if people played games for their gameplay and actual story merits rather then for some need of self inserting in stories that arent for self inserting, things would be much better.

I disagree. People play games for various reasons, and should be free to do so, and more importantly, feel comfortable doing so.

What exactly are these games that are making women uncomfortable? Not attacking, I'm just simply curious. I can't remember ever being made to feel uncomfortable over the way a game treated a female character - the only games I can think of are either non-western games like Dead or Alive, or games that are generally regarded as awful, such as Ride to Hell. Isn't the biggest problem - and the biggest discussion - not that women are made to feel uncomfortable by the games, but that they are simply excluded from them?

I mean, the only time a game ever really made me uncomfortable as a woman was the Broodmother in Dragon Age, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any real misogyny in that game.

It varies from person to person, but generally we're talking things like character design that pushes sexualisation before function (especially if, say, we're getting 'veteran warriors' put side by side where the woman is a smoking sexpot in a few scraps of chainmail, and the man is a grizzled, scarred slab in full platemail), female supporting characters being weak and lacking in agency as well as the tendency of female characters to be victims or dead to give motivation to the male.

Ultimately though in more its not these aspects individually, its often a mixture of them, and the fact their very much overwhelmingly present. One damsel in distress may make you roll your eyes, but ten in a row from ten games (with a few of them being killed off to be 'gritty and edgy') is probably going to put you on edge.

 

[generals3]

Yeah, I mean Electronic Arts has been making such great business decisions of late, and making the best decisions ever with the directions they've given their studios for their IP. And Activision? Their so canny and on the ball with what the market wants they did their best to kill the Modern Warfare franchise before it even began because all the big games at the time were world war 2 shooters, and drove the guitar hero franchise into the ground with over-saturation.

And yet they're huge companies. Whatever you may think they're still doing something right, business wise at least. Their shares have after all been rising over the last year and for activision their shares have reached an all time top this year.

Not to say companies always make the right choices, but, their decisions are, in their eyes, based on their expected profitability. It's up to you to prove them wrong. And how you do that is with your wallet.

You can tell them they're being dicks for "excluding" women all you want but as long as no evidence suggests that means they're losing money they're not going to give a shyte. It may sound harsh but such is business. As long as you're not infringing upon rights or harming people it's all about money.

 

[WindKnight]

And what about the publishers who have no problem excluding female gamers with such a tight restriction, but bend over backwards to cater for male gamers with such restrictions? We've had devs being told they cant have a female main character and actively forced into making it male, and again, Remember Me had a very hard time finding a publisher because they wouldn't lose the female main character.

Tampon Makers are sexist, how dare they not cater to a male audience with no interest in the product or use for it. Point being not all games need to hit all demographics. The core problem being the lack of games that appropriately hit the female demographic. The issue should not be that some games target a male demographic but those refusing the cater in some form to a female one possibly and more likely with other titles.

Should a developer be forced to change their artistic vision ? No
Is attacking any game that dares to not offer a female lead as an option potentially as bad ? Well yes if that's damaging the artistic vision, and this pressure has happened and been targeted at some developers.

There's been some criticism of games with multiple protagonists (or offering huge customization of your protagonist/avatar) for not including female options. some questions have been asked pointedly ('hey, if you can have 60 differant t-shirts for guys, why not just make it 30 t-shirts for guys and 30 for women?' for example) but I've seen little advocacy for all out forcing female characters into something. An artist is free to make his or work how they like. Likewise, the audience is free to criticize the artists work how they like, and if the criticism causes them to rethink their art and make it better, is that really a bad thing?

I have not seen female characters forced into a game where they were not wanted. I have, however, seen cases where devs wanted a female character and were banned from doing so, or struggled to find a publisher because they wouldn't give their female character up. I see a lot of complaints about a potential curtailing of an artists vision that simply hasn't happened and may never happen, but plenty of defense for situations where an artists vision HAS ALREADY BEEN CURTAILED.

Not to say companies always make the right choices, but, their decisions are, in their eyes, based on their expected profitability. It's up to you to prove them wrong. And how you do that is with your wallet.

Except honestly they seem to be succeeding (when they are - the last few years have been very bad for EA) in spite of their decisions, not because of them. What success they have at the moment is due to milking of yearly franchises, one of the biggest of which I must point out again would not exist if its publisher had gotten their way.

These are not people to trust they know best about the profitability angle of gender representation. You know what did gangbusters at the cinema last year? Frozen and The Hunger Games, female led films in a market producers still point at Catwoman and Elektra as proof audiences don't want female led movies.

 

[WindKnight]

The only situations I know of that's come to light of female characters being an issue were Remember Me and Timesplitters 2 am I missing some others ?

Sleeping Dogs started life as Black Lotus with the lead character being a Lucy Liu styled heroine, but the devs were forced to make the characters male (not to mention other publisher mandates that ultimately came to nought).

Naughty dog also talked candidly about how the publishers wanted Ellie cut from the packaging and promotion of the Last Of Us and they had to fight to keep her on the front cover, and then Elizabeth is entirely absent from the Bioshock: Infinite packaging despite the game being very much about her.

 

[Smeatza]

Wrestling has the issue that well the womens Wrestling circuit has been a joke for many years. I think it was either the Retirement of Trish Stratus or even as far back as China that the legitimacy was somewhat lost in the public eye. Though I will say there are female wrestling fans but I don't have any numbers to say the percentage of each so it could well be a mostly male market.

What you say of women's wrestling is certainly true for the WWE, I can't really speak for anywhere else. Although I did see some clips from a relatively new Scottish wrestling league and the women there seemed to be badass.

But I was just drawing a little parallel. People often say "how would men like it if your media was full of speedo-wearing, muscle-bound demigods?" And it would seem that in at least one case (wrestling) they don't mind it.

 

[generals3]

Not to say companies always make the right choices, but, their decisions are, in their eyes, based on their expected profitability. It's up to you to prove them wrong. And how you do that is with your wallet.

Except honestly they seem to be succeeding (when they are - the last few years have been very bad for EA) in spite of their decisions, not because of them. What success they have at the moment is due to milking of yearly franchises, one of the biggest of which I must point out again would not exist if its publisher had gotten their way.

These are not people to trust they know best about the profitability angle of gender representation. You know what did gangbusters at the cinema last year? Frozen and The Hunger Games, female led films in a market producers still point at Catwoman and Elektra as proof audiences don't want female led movies.

I'll have to ask, how do you know that it is "in spite of"? I feel like you simply want to believe that. Now if you're a marketeer specialized in market research of the VG industry i may believe that but i don't think you are.

You may be true, but this is all speculation. And I have yet to see evidence that suggests it's actually "in spite of".
As long as male lead franchises consistently top the charts I really don't see how anyone can claim with certitude the market (on the demand side) bias towards male lead games is just in the publishers' heads.

And i don't really think Frozen is an appropriate example. The cinema equivalent of AAA violent VG's are action movies not animated disney movies. And The Hunger Games is indeed an exception, but for all we know it is indeed just that, an exceptions. Exceptions don't necessarily disprove trends. Surely we cannot expect big companies to risk millions in the hopes the project becomes an "exception". (and what is gangbusters? Never heard of it and neither does IMDB apparently, correction IMDB knows but there is little info and is categorized as "in development" :/)

 

[gargantual]

Ridiculous. Its all paranoia from non gamers.

So what if guys entertain the idea of playing as a powerful dude, getting ass. Big deal. Everyone has some bit of thematically wild escapism fantasy in games or film. This stuff is for functional people who 'get it'. Not for real world psychoes.

Any person that has potential negative takeaways from fiction into their real lives, means they are lacking real world education in that dept. Most of us have or have had parents or parental figures, or good friends of different genders and backgrounds, or have responsibilities to keep us grounded.

I wonder if it ever occured to a few of those critics, the reason why these 'power fantasies' will always be in the entertainment market because most functional gamers are painfully aware real relationships are NOTHING like those one dimensional fantasies, and demands the exact antithesis of 'Kratos'. Another ideal that may be easier to start but can be hard to consistently maintain.

If ladies, or LGBT had a few more of their own power fantasies, the game market would be better. Wouldn't be comfortable experience for some dudes but fuck it we'd lave less of these debates. They'll be too busy with Madden and CoD to really care. Everyone gets their fantasy. Devs cater to niche markets for that stuff, and go diverse when they aim for 100 million blockbuster sales.

What about real people who don't know how to look in the mirror. Who have to superimpose themselves unnecessarily, and start fights with civil people, or play snide 'professional victims' to extort money or false respect. Games didn't teach them such levels of social abuse or snide opportunism. Other REAL people in their lives who validated such behavior or 'showed them how to get away with it' with power and money did.

The rest of us sink into unruly avatars, and unrealistic dreams for unwinding purposes only.

TL,DR. Why constantly go after the themes of games? I don't see much of a real-world correlation to homicide, thievery, social oppression and sex abuse. Many factors condition people to do wrong. They do wrong in "the real world", when they see it works in "the real world".

 

[Bluestorm83]

Violence VS Sexism in games, eh? I'll put 75 bucks on Violence, in a come-from-behind victory in the last inning.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Hell, I think that first picture's pretty attractive. You see dirt, scratches, and scars. I see sinewy muscle, bright blue eyes, silky hair. And if any girl who saw that happened to have a power fetish, well... really, the only truly unattractive thing I see there is the overly pointy chin and the vaguely cartoony art style - broaden the jawline a little and make the picture more photo-realistic and bam, smutty romance cover.

Well honestly I'm a little surprised that you find that picture romance novel cover attractive. It is very different than the images that I always see brought up here in attractive character threads, and as you mentioned the overly pointed chin is pretty unattractive. Not to mention every romance novel cover I've seen has a more seductive expression than a scowl. But to each their own I suppose.

Now, I'll admit that I don't exactly get hot and heavy over Kratos, but aren't you sort of boiling down what women find attractive in a man to a single ideal? If I went "All men find busty, curvaceous women with thick blonde hair, plump lips, and a perpetual 'orgasm voice' attractive, and that's all they ever find attractive" you'd probably fight me on it, wouldn't you? Same goes here. A wide variety of men can appeal to a wide variety of women - there's no single ideal, and a lot of women can find wildly different types of men attractive, just like a lot of men do.

I may not have made that entirely clear, but this is more or less what I was trying to get across. A male character being attractive boils down to more than just being shirtless and muscular. Which the vast majority of the examples mentioned in this thread are doing, equating shirtlessness to a deliberate intention to sexualize the character for women. As I said in my previous post, someone brought up Gears of War as an example of a game with sexualized men. As much variety people have in what they're attracted to, I can't imagine that "Gears of War: The Romance Novel Collection" being a hit in any sense. For some reason men resembling tanks has never been a massive hit.

While some people indeed may find Kratos or Marcus Fenix attractive, they're at best very, very niche groups. And any game trying to grab the female demographic by presenting them with characters like that will fail very hard. It's like you wouldn't say that Ellie from Borderlands 2 is sexualized because she has massive tits. Besides that she has a dressed just like a average person would. Some people probably do find her attractive, but you're not going to grab the male demographic by smacking her on the cover in a sexy pose.

I mean, Geralt has been mentioned as a grizzled scarred sort that no straight woman would want, but hey, I think he's pretty good-looking. Not a bombshell by any means, but still attractive. As a matter of fact, I've noticed I actually have a bit of a propensity for the grizzled, gravelly-voiced bad ass.

As I saw someone else quoting you about, just because a character is attractive doesn't mean they're sexualized. While I have seen people considering Garrus attractive (not many, if anything people find his voice attractive) in no way is his character sexualized. There's pretty much zero chance that when they were designing Garrus they were sitting around a table saying, "Okay, this looks good, but do you think he's sexy enough? I mean we want something in there for the women right?". On the other hand, I am pretty sure that's what was in the front of their minds when they designed the busty blue bisexual female race that sends off half of its population to be strippers.

On the other side, there's plenty of female characters that a men consider attractive that are not sexualized. With very, very few exceptions, I'd say that every female character I've seen in games is attractive. In almost all media this is true of both genders, if less so with men. But there's a difference between a character being attractive, and them grinding a staff between their butt cheeks.

 

[Saetha]

Gah, long post. Okay.

Well honestly I'm a little surprised that you find that picture romance novel cover attractive. It is very different than the images that I always see brought up here in attractive character threads, and as you mentioned the overly pointed chin is pretty unattractive. Not to mention every romance novel cover I've seen has a more seductive expression than a scowl. But to each their own I suppose.

Yes, well, again, what is considered to be of attractive to an entire sex isn't necessarily so. I mean, plenty of movies and video games seem to think men lose their minds over unrealistically busty-but-thin women running around in a scrap of chain mail and a few bits of tape, but my general experience with actual men is that they find it base and pandering at best, unattractive and grossly misogynistic at worst. What's considered attractive, especially by marketers trying to land on a universal ideal, isn't what always works. Just because romance novels tend towards lithely muscled men with come hither smiles and deep v-necked shirts doesn't mean every woman goes for that, or that it's the peak of attraction for them.

As for the rest of the post... I mean, yeah, I more-or-less agree. I recognize that many male characters in video games aren't made with driving women wild in mind, something which may not be true when it comes to female characters. That being said, I reject the idea that because a female character - or any character, really - was made to be sexually or romantically attractive means they can't be a good character in their own right, or a character empowering to the gender they belong to.

It just also helps to keep in mind that you shouldn't judge the general tastes of women by what you see on underwear ads and romance covers, just like how I'd be remiss to judge what men like based on something like Duke Nukem. I mean, yeah, I guess they're attractive, and you won't have to look hard to find women who will go wild over the likes of Dean Winchester and Captain America, but there's also plenty of women who find men attractive even if they fall outside of the norm - I know people who find JonTron pretty cute, for instance, and he's way off the mark of traditionally attractive. And there's plenty of women who find people attractive on both sides of the fence. There's no universal ideal for women, just like there's no universal ideal for men.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

*snip*

Yeah, no real disagreements here. I wasn't trying to go for a catch all "This is what women find attractive" in my first post, just an example of how a male character could be designed with the intent of being attractive to a larger female audience. In fact the friend I was talking to about it didn't even find the romance novel guy attractive, but she knew that's what they were going for by the posturing, appearance and presentation. And since I was trying to draw comparisons to the stereotypical assumptions that game developers make about what men are attracted to, I wanted to go for more stereotypical portrayals of what women were attracted to.

I was considering adding something about how a character can be sexy without it being a bad thing too, but my post was getting long winded enough as it was. There's a big difference between a character being sexy and being sexy to the player, or through characters the player's supposed to identify with.

 

[mecegirl]

Yeah, I can see where you are going with this. According to that literally any male video game character ever could be portrayed as a power fantasy. I don't know what your ideal male lead character with no power fantasy behind him looks like, but I bet he'd be fucking boring.

The same thing, by the way, could be said of female characters too.

If more female characters were protagonists in video games, yeah. But they aren't. It stands to reason that most protagonists would be power fantasies within video games as a medium because most video games tend to fall within the action and adventure genre. The power fantasy is pretty much the whole point. The same can't be said for the love interest, or the female protagonist that's been sexed up beyond normal levels. Most protagonists are attractive anyway, but there is a difference between the relative attractiveness of a chracter like Miranda, and why the camera felt the need to follow her ass around during cut scenes.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes, because there are absolutely no women in the game industry.

Entirely male profession, no females are ever involved in any of these games people are talking about.

All the fault of men.

Is there any reason that strawman even if it was someone's actual argument would make a solid counterpoint? There's women in the industry. And? Unless you demonstrate a significant leadership or marketing role that puts them directly in charge, it still falls to men. And since almost nobody disputes the disparity of men and women in tech jobs, I'd think it was a given that you cannot make that burden of proof.

because I chose it doesn't detract from the fact I still forced my way through until I hit a point where I stopped looking for it and was able to enjoy the game as a game.

You forced yourself to as a challenge. That's inherently different and exactly why the diet analogy holds up.

The He-man vs Barbie was done because specifically Barbie was made by a Women and is regularly attacked as being bad while He-man was made by a man and is often presented by the same people as a good role model or at least not a negative one.

Barbie was created by a woman and Heavy Metal was coined to refer to Led Zeppelin. Both are irrelevant to the modern state. You will note that almost all (possibly all, but I'm affording for something I haven't seen) of the criticism comes from after Ruth was no longer a hands-on member of Mattel and she was radically changed. Your premise, as such, is false. Barbie may be created by a woman, but saying the reason she catches flak is related is like saying LZ wrote "Through the Fire and Flames."

The simple point being when a man designs a character for men it's a male power fantasy. When a women designs a character for Women but certain women don't like it then the free thought is removed from said women and it's claimed to be the Patriarchy that made her do is as she seemingly can't think for herself.

I already addressed why this was false with Barbie; can you offer an actual example?

Not that I entirely discard the idea of an issue with "patriarchy." Majority rule has led to self-loathing blacks, self-loathing Jews, self-loathing gays, why would women be any different? Why wouldn't women be influenced by male standards of beauty predominant in what sells to the only group marketing cares about: dudes?

Again, to the Barbie example, would there be any complaints if it was still the same Barbie from the 50s? Maybe, but most of them would be DOA. Her proportions wouldn't be an issue, and that was one of the biggest issues. She likely wouldn't be the poster girl for domesticity, either. an ironic statement, since she was invented in the 50s and many of her changes weren't codified until the 70s, when the Handlers had a significantly reduced role in the company (having, you know, resigned by the mid-70s).

Would the same thing have happened if Ruth Handler was full involved? Maybe, but the idea that it's getting flak for being a product by a woman doesn't have legs because it was at the hands of men it saw most of the changes that led to criticism.

On the other hand, maybe not. Ruth was a feminists in the 40s and 50s. Maybe she would pull an about-face, but even later in life she didn't seem to. Still, all we can do is speculate. There's just no reason to use Barbie as an example here.

Also, He-Man's kind of bad. I'm not talking about the physique, though I think that's dumb[footnote]However, the fact remains that we had scrawny male heroes, while any woman in kids' media who wasn't a knockout was treated as ugly, or homely[/footnote], but rather, using him as an example. One of the primary reasons he's seen as positive is what he taught kids. He taught kids not to use violence, to think before fighting, and some weird messages about drugs and being touched in your nono bits. What messages did 80s Barbie offer us?

 

[Something Amyss]

Violence VS Sexism in games, eh? I'll put 75 bucks on Violence, in a come-from-behind victory in the last inning.

I don't know, I'd expect sexism to come from behind, if you know what I mean. Possibly with a wolf whistle.