Violence in games vs Sexism in games?

[WeepingAngels]

The actual problem with sexist games is that they actively discourage women from playing games, or entering the game industry. 50% of the population is literally being given every reason to want nothing to do with the industry on any level. That's bad.

Ok, since men are human beings too and since any given gamer has probably killed thousands of men over the years, allow me to rephrase your statement and then you can tell me why "that's different" for women.

The actual problem with violent games is that they actively discourage men from playing games, or entering the game industry. 50% of the population is literally being given every reason to want nothing to do with the industry on any level. That's bad.

 

[tippy2k2]

This argument has been debunked so many fucking times its not even funny. The number of "greased up muscle men in speedos" games out there is so fucking low in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe I don't understand what you're going for here but that was exactly my point. The "greased up speedo men" was a hypothetical I made up where in a parallel universe, the male characters get the same exact treatment as many female characters get today.

I was not saying that we have nothing but speedo men in our current gaming market. It was merely a "What If?" where we swapped out the busty eye candy lady in many games for a speedo wearing sexy man. Instead of old school Lara "What's the nude code?" Croft, we would have Larry "This isn't a roll of quarters in my speedo" Croft.

If I'm misunderstanding you here, feel free to clarify.

 

[Saetha]

It all comes down to what women complain about. If women were to begin complaining about violence in video games then it would quickly become a hot topic. I am sure most of you remember how quickly sexism became a hot topic.

Are you being serious?
If so, I would just like everyone to look at this comment in silence for a few seconds. Just let it sink in. (Then maybe report it for being sexist garbage)

I believe this is a reference to the whole "white knight culture". Now before any-one says "that doesn't exist" I'm calling BS. The implication being some moron guys will go along with whatever girls say just because they're female. What's being highlighted here is also a sexist trend however it is "positive" sexism or more correctly a "positive" outcome due to sexism.

snipped

The issue I see is that those characters (Geralt, Sam, and Kratos for your examples) is two-fold:

1. Maybe I'm wrong because I'm a guy so therefore don't see them that way (any woman want to chime in on this point?), I can't imagine that Sam Fisher, Geralt, and Kratos gets the ladies hearts racing. Besides that, it feels like there are a LOT more normal men than there are normal woman. As you stated, this might be a confirmation bias but there are very few female characters that wear more clothing than is absolutely necessary before it steps into porn where it doesn't seem to be the case with guys. Off the top of my head, I can think of Alyx Vance, Samus (until Team Ninja got their hands on her ), Nintendo characters (since they're all more cartoony), and Naughty Dog characters (they seem to have a great track record of memorable and good characters period).

I'm also male I can however actually confirm (thanks to my ex actually telling me so) that for one girl at least Metal Gear Solid's Snake did it for her.......

As a straight woman, I can confirm that, yes, Snake is pretty damn hot (Though obviously, women aren't a hivemind and you can probably find plenty who would disagree with me on that) Personally, I find a lot of video game protagonists attractive, either in personality or appearance (Or both). Booker DeWitt, Bigby Wolf, Nathan Drake, Adam Jensen (Even though he sounds like a lawn mower with throat cancer) Bioware's got a mess of fangirl magnets in it's ranks - Alistair, Fenris, Garrus. And while I don't personally care for them, or haven't played the games starring them, there's also Dante, Edward Kenway, Ezio, Garret, Corvo, at least one girl I know has the hots for Agent 47 (Or whatever the Hitman main character is called) And despite the fact that the game's not even out yet, there's already a fanbase springing up around the main character of Watch_Dogs.

Really, there seems to be a whole of swath of tumblr that consists entirely of people obsessing over hot guys from video games. It's actually rather amusing at times, to have a pulse on both predominantly female communities like the one on Tumblr, and predominantly male communities like this and other ones. I remember when they started releasing information about Dragon Age: Inquisition, revealing the lack of regenerating health, the presence of timed missions - the reception here and in other places seemed generally positive, happy that Bioware wasn't "dumbing it down" and holding the player's hand. On Tumblr? "They're taking the regenerating health away? They're adding timed missions? Goddamint, Origins was already hard enough! Well, guess I'll have to download a 'Make easy mode easier' mod again..."

This post sums it up pretty nicely: http://e-n-g-a.tumblr.com/post/79914500392/i-have-99-problems-and-all-of-them-are-fictional

EDIT: And here's another post that I find sums up the hypocrisy of the whole "sexualization of women" thing (Though in all fairness, the poster has demonstrated that she hasn't got a problem with women in skimpy sexual outfits, especially since she's drawn fan art of plenty): http://momochanners.tumblr.com/post/80034596943/im-dissapointed-varric-who-was-goofy-and

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Spoiler: This, is

Spoiler: Basically the same as this

No...

No it's not.

You could not sell a romance novel with the first as its cover. The prince is covered in scars, he's dirty, his face is pretty ugly, he's scowling. I'll go ask some female friends if any of that is a turn on at all.

What? Not at all?! What madness is this? Maybe we should move on to the next most popular example, Kratos. That sexy, scarred, bloodstained, eternally scowling, unhappy ball of anger.

Spoiler

... Beautiful

One day. One day a majority of male gamers will understand that giving a character over the top muscles does not make him automatically attractive. Particularly not if their faces exist in constant scowls. Strangely enough the character's faces actually need to be attractive. And suave, come hither smiles display that attractiveness far better than looking like you just smelled something rank. Actually, in my experience I've found far more women finding lithe and lean muscled men way more attractive than men built like tanks.

But of course I just saw someone mentioning gears of war as an example of sexualized male characters, so that day isn't coming anytime soon.

There's only been one character mentioned in this thread that I've seen considered sexy, and that's Dante. Maybe some people should pay more attention to the "Attractive video game characters" threads and see what examples come up from women? I've seen characters like Fenris from Dragon Age, Dante, Cloud, hell, even Vaan from FF XII. I can't think mention of any of the go to "Look! Men are sexualized too!" loinclothed, rippling muscled characters that always gets dug up in these threads as "proof" that the video game industry is trying to sexualize their men just as much.

EDIT: You'll definitely see male characters that are attractive, but they're like how Alyx Vance is attractive, not how Ivy or the DoA characters are attractive. They're generally attractive in the kind of way people normally would look, and they're not played up for their sexuality.

OT: The complaints about sexism that I've seen mainly have to do with how it's reflective of sexist ideas (or sexist cliches) that the people making these games hold. Female characters are disproportionately portrayed as weak, helpless and in need of saving compared to the male characters. Something like that doesn't happen "just 'cause", at least not with that regularity.

 

[zefichan]

I love how the "sexism is not an issue" squad tries to use false equivalencies and logical fallacies all over the place. And of course, the guys defending sexism need to show their hateboner for Anita Sarkeesian, too.

You realize that her very existance proves that sexism is a massive issue, right? The only reason she even is famous is gamer males acting worse than troglodytes and sending rape and death threats en masse because she was going to make videos criticizing videogames that few people were even going to see. As Jim Sterling pointed out: Misogynist gamers created her popularity. And that's why I support her: The more she makes the sexists froth with foam on their mouths, the better. It proves the point perfectly with every action these guys make


It's a simple fact that female gamers get far, far worse harassment in the gaming community than men do. We've had studies where the only difference between a player was the voice other players heard, and yet the harassment was multitudes higher if players thought they were dealing with a woman. It's so bad that the gaming community is actually *worse* on being sexist than the general population.

And here we have the issue.

This extends to the games made for the community. Sexist games aren't an issue because they make the community sexist, but because a)companies think you're all extremely sexist (which, personally, if I were a guy, would offend me a lot... Of course it doesn't if you're in the camp hating on Miss Sarkeesian) b)they do exclude woman.
Especially b because, as the Anita incident proves, a isn't so far from the truth.
Don't want a) to be true? Maybe stop sending death and rape threats to women you disagree with, and stop blaming her for them, too.

Sexist video games don't *cause* gamer male sexism, but they are proof of it.


By the way: The whiny argument that the enemies in games are usually men is pretty braindead. The reason for that is sexism again: Sexism against women. Women are mostly used as eye candy, so games aren't using women as anything but that. Sexist men also can't handle women as soldiers, so the games obviously won't have many of these.

If you are angry that most military shooters have male enemies, then the solution would be to demand less sexism and more women in general. Because that'd also mean more women you could kill. If gaming wasn't generally so steeped in misogyny, women would be regular enemies just like men would be.


In fact, games with more female characters tend to have more female enemies. So, why are you guys so upset at the notion that games could have more female characters in clothing similar to that the guys wear? Since you want to kill ladies so much, that's what you'd get. Tons of it! And nobody'd care.

Hey, remember World of Warcraft? Lotsa female enemies around. And do people complain? Nope: iN fact, those evil feminists you hate so much tend to like that. Cause it's equal :>

 

[Saetha]

Spoiler: This, is

Spoiler: Basically the same as this

No...

No it's not.

You could not sell a romance novel with the first as its cover. The prince is covered in scars, he's dirty, his face is pretty ugly, he's scowling. I'll go ask some female friends if any of that is a turn on at all.

What? Not at all?! What madness is this? Maybe we should move on to the next most popular example, Kratos. That sexy, scarred, bloodstained, eternally scowling, unhappy ball of anger.

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.

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 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.

 

[The Lunatic]

No...

No it's not.

You could not sell a romance novel with the first as its cover. The prince is covered in scars, he's dirty, his face is pretty ugly, he's scowling. I'll go ask some female friends if any of that is a turn on at all.

What? Not at all?! What madness is this? Maybe we should move on to the next most popular example, Kratos. That sexy, scarred, bloodstained, eternally scowling, unhappy ball of anger.

Spoiler

... Beautiful

Hairs only need to be split so finely.

If you think so, but, I'd wager mostly everyone would disagree.

 

[generals3]

Do people argue that? The "playing sexist games makes people mistreat women"? Maybe they do but I find that when most woman discuss their problems with it it's this:

It makes ladies uncomfortable.

That's about it. Think of it this way as a dude (I assume you are a dude)...

You're playing Ultra Awesome New Third Person Shooter! The only characters you are allowed to choose is greased up muscle men in speedos. That's what you get to look at all day and all night while playing the game. No, you can't choose another character; greased up speedo man or you don't get to play.

Now think of it this way; 75% of games (random number, that has no basis in fact) you get to play involve nothing but greased up speedo guys...

How long would it take before you started complaining about the game industry?

It's got nothing to do with desensitization or brain control; it just sucks to have nothing to play as except for a greased up speedo guy.

Well. One could ask the big question: why aren't 75% of the male characters in speedos? With the answer probably being: because the consumers don't want it. Which also implies that if 75% (although i severely doubt that number is close to being real) of women are in bikinis is because that's what the market wants. It sucks to be a minority consumer in a market (as in: has a taste only shared by a minority) but you can't force the market to screw itself just to give everyone an equal amount of what they seek.

But an other point i want to make is that a man in a speedo is actually not necessarily the equivalent portrayal of women in bikini armors or lara croft outfits. And the reason why is because clothes are perceived differently on men and women. Take for instance those extremely short jeans shorts i see quite often on women in the summer. On a woman it makes them look sexy. Now put that on a man and it makes him look weird/like an idiot.

And since consumers are real people from the real world the different perceptions regarding clothes and gender has to be taken into account. This makes the whole point "How would you feel if male characters were dressed like female characters?" moot. It is based on an assumption which is not true in the real world, the one that a certain type of clothes has the exact same effect on both gender. Until fashion becomes 100% Unisex these points shouldn't be made.

 

[Smeatza]

You're playing Ultra Awesome New Third Person Shooter! The only characters you are allowed to choose is greased up muscle men in speedos. That's what you get to look at all day and all night while playing the game. No, you can't choose another character; greased up speedo man or you don't get to play.

Isn't that quite an accurate description of wrestling?
Aren't wrestling fans mostly male?

OT: I was under the impression it was a potential issue of diversity.
I myself have never had any trouble avoiding sexualised or exploitative characters of either gender so it's an issue I find it hard to get on board with.

To me it seems like complaining about movies because they all feature Bruce Willis.
In reality they don't, only the most popular action movies feature Bruce Willis. They're not indicative of movies as a whole.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

If we are discussing which one is worse, I'd find it hard to say: Violence is more of a creative problem in the sense that so many AAA games made nowadays are so violent that it becomes a bit boring, and also silly.

Case in point: Assassin's Creed, the counter technique allows you to kill 100+ soldiers incredibly easy, and there is barely any in game punishment for doing so, as if the game encourages these sort of juvenile power fantasies.

Before any of you decide to pounce on me as if I am some sort of "think of the children" moral guardian, I mean that violence has saturised our medium from a creative perspective: nothing interesting is done about amongst the AAAs, so the connection between gameplay and story becomes weaker for it. The few times we do get something interesting done about the over-abundance of violence in games, we get some true gems like Call of Duty 4's nuke scene and the entirety of Spec Ops The Line.

Sexism however, is a lot more subtle, and it is more of a perspective problem, and what I choose to think is a symptom of lazy writing in games. Often, the big games have very little focus given to the actual writing, and thus we end up with incredibly revealing and backwards presentations of women.

That, however, can cause problems for the younger demographics. I won't mince words: teenagers(<18) do play games like CoD and Assassin's Creed etc. and they are likely the driving force behind the sales. They are a considerable demographic right now, and I feel that they can misinterpret games very easily. Since they are also mostly male teenagers, it can lead to real problems in their perception towards women.

For example(I know its bad practice to use anectodal evidence, but I feel it is somewhat relevant, and I won't extrapolate), in my old secondary school, a lot of the guys there played the sorts of games I mentioned: CoD, Fifa, etc.They had very negative perceptions towards women,(I think I remember one instance where they casually asked a girl if she would give them a blowjob out of nowhere) in part, it could be due to other factors(such as general insecurity), but it does show that they were easily influenced by possible factors at home, or "adult entertainment".

In that particular case, it can show that they can be easily influenced because they lack critical thinking or a guiding hand, no one there to tell them that what happens in "those videos" is not representative of real life, and is just a fantasy. Whilst the example isn't as related to games, I still feel that there is a possibility that lazy writing which results in sexist depictions of women can be problematic.

I cannot say if it will result in real-world misogyny, but it is something that can worry me.

Ideally, the solution to these problems would be to avoid lazy writing, but that is too simplistic a solution, and I am afraid that I cannot think of an immediately plausible one.

 

[Uhura]

@The_Kodu
The characters I picked came from your earlier post in this thread. From your other examples I would agree with Dante. Prince/Jan are debatable and Monkey looks like another really ott roided up character. Again a male character that doesn't really fit in with the romance cover guys.

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 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.

The discussion was about sexualization and sexualization and attraction are two different things. There are people who find older women sexy, that doesn't mean that doctor Chakwas in Mass Effect was a sexualized character. Some people find older guys hot, that doesn't mean that Admiral Hackett in ME was a sexualized character.

 

[Byte2222]

The violence and sexism arguments are different. The violence is everywhere, callously thrown in - if it was used properly, it should turn the player's stomach every time a spurt of blood appears. The sexism is more... insidious. The fact that we're arguing over it should be proof enough. I think the thing we should really be focusing on is being responsible, using violence as a carefully-applied tool and thinking about whether things truly are equal for everyone (the answer is almost always 'no', even in real life).

Snip

I agree with this guy a lot

 

[WindKnight]

I think an interesting observation on this came from an article on the Mary Sue where one of the contributors noted that the main difference when recommending a game to female friends rather than male friends (leaving aside taste, etc) was that in a lot of cases she was having to give warnings to female friends about how something was probably going to leave them feeling uncomfortable due to how it treated or portrayed a female character.

Compare this to Remember Me where the creator notes one of the specific reasons used to say the game shouldn't have had a female character was in response to her having a male love interest she kisses.

'You can't do that,' said the publisher, 'You're making a dude (the player) kiss another dude, and that will make them uncomfortable.'

 

[Evonisia]

Do people argue that? The "playing sexist games makes people mistreat women"? Maybe they do but I find that when most woman discuss their problems with it it's this:

It makes ladies uncomfortable.

That's about it. Think of it this way as a dude (I assume you are a dude)...

You're playing Ultra Awesome New Third Person Shooter! The only characters you are allowed to choose is greased up muscle men in speedos. That's what you get to look at all day and all night while playing the game. No, you can't choose another character; greased up speedo man or you don't get to play.

Now think of it this way; 75% of games (random number, that has no basis in fact) you get to play involve nothing but greased up speedo guys...

How long would it take before you started complaining about the game industry?

It's got nothing to do with desensitization or brain control; it just sucks to have nothing to play as except for a greased up speedo guy.

This argument has been debunked so many fucking times its not even funny. The number of "greased up muscle men in speedos" games out there is so fucking low in the grand scheme of things. Don't believe me? Heres Gamespots top 10 games list for today, a website that loves to cater to the dudebro crowd.

1. Battlefield 4
2. COD Ghosts
3. Dark Souls II
4. Titanfall
5. Elder Scrolls Online
6. Pokemon X
7. Pokemon Y
8. Assassins Creed 4
9. Arkham Origins
10. Dead Rising 3

Theres lots of dumb shallow shit in there, but the only one that shuts out women specifically and not people who can't be entertained by watching random shit explode for more than an hour in general is COD: Ghosts. On the front page of the German PC Games the first games that jump out are ESO, Goat Simulator, The Witcher 3 and Mario Cart. Wow, I bet women feel so fucking shut out by those. Then I jump on Facebook and I have 10 women sending me invites to minigames every hour.

Call of Duty: Ghosts barely shuts out women in singleplayer (though their portrayal could have been more frequent), in multiplayer it's the first instalment to allow you to play as a woman. I'd argue BF4 and Assassin's Creed IV are worse in the scheme of "greased up males" and shutting out women.

 

[josemlopes]

The actual problem with sexist games is that they actively discourage women from playing games, or entering the game industry. 50% of the population is literally being given every reason to want nothing to do with the industry on any level. That's bad.

So, does Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge and Beyond Good and Evil discourage men from playing their games? As a man, the gender of the character plays a very little role in the game when your objective becomes saving the world, your friends or yourself (something where your gender as nothing to do with the game).

In Gears of War 3 there is a chapter where you play as Anya, it was still the same game with the same purpose of saving the world.

 

[WindKnight]

The actual problem with sexist games is that they actively discourage women from playing games, or entering the game industry. 50% of the population is literally being given every reason to want nothing to do with the industry on any level. That's bad.

So, does Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge and Beyond Good and Evil discourage men from playing their games? As a man, the gender of the character plays a very little role in the game when your objective becomes saving the world, your friends or yourself (something where your gender as nothing to do with the game).

In Gears of War 3 there is a chapter where you play as Anya, it was still the same game with the same purpose of saving the world.

Most gamers, male or female, don't care what gender their character is when they play a game so long as its good/tells a story they want to play. Nonetheless, many female gamers find themselves in situations where they are left feeling disgusted, insulted, or flat out uncomfortable by the way a female character is portrayed, or treated in the game. the publishers have no issue at all including material in the game these players would find unpleasant and possibly even offensive, and if I may again point out Remember Me, freaked out at the idea of including something innocuous (a female player character kissing a male non player character) lest it makes the poor sensitive mens feel uncomfortable by making them kiss another man.

As to your point, lets say you have ten men who will only play as a male character in a game, and ten women who will only play as a female character in a game. The ten men have a whole smorgasbord of games they can play as, while the women will have a very tightly restricted list of games they can play, and will often run into the same content that made the female gamers who don't care what gender they played as feel uncomfortable.

 

[josemlopes]

The actual problem with sexist games is that they actively discourage women from playing games, or entering the game industry. 50% of the population is literally being given every reason to want nothing to do with the industry on any level. That's bad.

So, does Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge and Beyond Good and Evil discourage men from playing their games? As a man, the gender of the character plays a very little role in the game when your objective becomes saving the world, your friends or yourself (something where your gender as nothing to do with the game).

In Gears of War 3 there is a chapter where you play as Anya, it was still the same game with the same purpose of saving the world.

As to your point, lets say you have ten men who will only play as a male character in a game, and ten women who will only play as a female character in a game. The ten men have a whole smorgasbord of games they can play as, while the women will have a very tightly restricted list of games they can play, and will often run into the same content that made the female gamers who don't care what gender they played as feel uncomfortable.

Its not the devs fault some gamers have tight restrictions, those gamers are missing out but its their own fault. With that then what about midgets? Are devs going to have to make now a shit ton of games to compensate for the lack of games that let you play as a midget?

PS: (also I dont really know what is the politically correct english word for midget so I am not using that word without any kind of hurtfull intent)