Why are people making such a big deal of out of Quiet from MGS 5?

Coreless

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As someone who really hates reading the perpetual whining over sexism and misogyny in games I think Kojima really takes the cake with Quiet. I don't think Kojima is sexist or a misogynist but he definitely has a perverted side to him that is not going to be accepted by most western standards.

Yes, her clothing is explained (if you like it or not is another story) which when I got to that part in game I just said "really Kojima?, really?". What really made me take notice was her animations in the ACC once her bond level was up, then I was like "are you f**king serious?, come on Kojima". Maybe her character was just a way to troll the "SJW" types and say "this is going to make your blood boil when you see this!" but really it just made me go "come on Kojima...".

Overall I liked Quiet and her story but her clothing and constant bending over in the chopper made even me go "wtf?" the first time I saw it. I think Kojima does deserve a little criticism with Quiet because her design really is a litte much even compared to the B&B Unit.
 

Danny Dowling

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LifeCharacter said:
Danny Dowling said:
Quiet is one of my fav characters from the game. if some pretentious asshats want to complain about her then it's not something i care to listen to.
Well most of those pretentious asshats say what amounts to "Way to put the best character in a dumb outfit" with some "I'm not feeling very ashamed by your bullshit reason Kojima" thrown in, so what's the issue? That they don't think everything about Quiet is absolutely perfect just the way it is?
nothing in life is perfect, but there isn't anything inherently wrong with her as a character either. it's a pointless complaint, and if it offends you that much build up your levels and stick her in the XOF suit and shut the fuck up. simple
 

Danny Dowling

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LifeCharacter said:
Danny Dowling said:
nothing in life is perfect, but there isn't anything inherently wrong with her as a character either. it's a pointless complaint, and if it offends you that much build up your levels and stick her in the XOF suit and shut the fuck up. simple
I would love to know by what metric we measure inherent wrongness in character design, but I should probably just shut the fuck up because you can put her in an alternate outfit which somehow means her original outfit never existed. God forbid people not like an outfit a character is showcased wearing and voice their dislike, wouldn't want to offend any of the people who think that everything's absolutely perfect and all criticism needs to be silenced.
ffs, if you don't like it don't play it. what do you expect to gain from the 10 pages of discussion? The constant whining may work on a European studio or an American studio but Kojima doesn't care what you think about Quiet he doesn't even work there any more.

Do you think the Japanese cared whether anyone didn't like Arcana Hearts 3? What about Disgea? They don't care what you think, what I think, what anyone thinks they just do what they want.

So if you don't like it, don't play it. Quiet is also a choice buddy, so if you still want to play MGSV then just don't use her and minimalise your run ins with her. Past that, find something more important to discuss.

Seriously every time I ever come on this board the most popular discussions are ones to do with misogyny and the objectification of women... god forbid anyone actually talk about games for once...
 

Erttheking

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Danny Dowling said:
If you don't like it don't play it is basically a term designed purely to say "I don't like what you have to say, shut up." How much of a cop out would it be if I just said to you "If you don't like my criticism, don't read it"?

Saying the Japanese don't care what you want is a very big misconception. They have corporate mandates and pandering just like every other country in the world, they're not special.

Oh, and just about every discussion about sexism we've had recently has been about people complaining about sexism. No one who seems to find things sexist makes threads about these, they only go to already existing discussions. If people are tired of talking about sexism, then they should stop constantly bringing the topic up.
 

IceForce

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LifeCharacter said:
I always wonder if the people trotting out the "if you don't like it don't x it" argument understand that such a thing can be applied to all criticism. "Don't like on-disc DLC, don't buy the game!" "Don't like criticism, don't read it!" "Don't like this character or this story arc or this weapon or this enemy or this mission, don't play it!"
erttheking said:
If you don't like it don't play it is basically a term designed purely to say "I don't like what you have to say, shut up." How much of a cop out would it be if I just said to you "If you don't like my criticism, don't read it"?
I wonder how certain users on this site would react if I said "If you don't like the Gamers Are Dead articles, just don't read them."

Oh well, too late, I've said it now. Me and my big mouth.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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DizzyChuggernaut said:
Imagine you wanted to watch a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters, and it had a completely pretentious plot that sucked the fun out of it because "giant robots fighting giant monsters isn't taken seriously". The pilot of one of the giant robots has a tragic backstory that's played 100% straight and tonally conflicts with the absurdity of the action. While the film is all about campy fun, the director INSISTS that it is "super serious" and "anyone that makes fun of it will regret it when the super tragic twist is dropped". Only, the "super tragic twist" is complete nonsense.

That's MGS5. If anyone's "spoiling the fun", it's Hideo Kojima.
It's also the Van Damme Street Fighter movie. Holy balls, that movie was just as bad with tonal shifts as MGS.
 

Dizchu

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Danny Dowling said:
Do you think the Japanese cared whether anyone didn't like Arcana Hearts 3? What about Disgea? They don't care what you think, what I think, what anyone thinks they just do what they want.
I think you're missing the point. MGS has always had fanservice, but usually Kojima wasn't cowardly enough to try disguising it with some superficial reason. Hell, MGS2 played around with the entire idea of fanservice by switching Snake with Raiden because players had idolised the character so much.

Games like Arcana Hearts, Senran Kagura, Bayonetta and Dragon's Crown are completely different. They OWN their fanservice, or at least don't try to explain it away so they can get the "respect" of the public/press. This isn't a matter of sexism, "cultural differences" or "political correctness", this is criticising the poor choices of a prolific game designer. We do the same thing when Peter Molyneux is involved, when David Cage is involved, when spokespeople for Konami, Ubisoft or EA try to wriggle their way out of criticism by justifying their actions with bullshit.

Hideo Kojima is fallible, like everyone else. He dun goofed. This coming from someone that quite likes a lot of Quiet fanart (her costume isn't that bad when rendered by certain artists).

erttheking said:
Oh, and just about every discussion about sexism we've had recently has been about people complaining about sexism. No one who seems to find things sexist makes threads about these, they only go to already existing discussions. If people are tired of talking about sexism, then they should stop constantly bringing the topic up.
I'd go further and say this has nothing to do with sexism, but dishonesty. People are usually willing to criticise the developers of great games when they screw up or try to mislead the audience. The people that are the most hung-up on the sexism aspect are those that are afraid that criticising something like this makes them one of the "SJW"s, because sexism apparently isn't up to interpretation. I find Other M a thousand times more sexist than Bayonetta. Certain "feminist critics" like to single out games like Bayonetta because they're more exuberant, and therefore overlook genuine instances of sexism in video games because they're not as in-your-face.

It is completely okay to not take one extreme or the other. Just because you criticise MGS5 doesn't mean you're suddenly an Anita Sarkeesian supporter, the same as defending fanservicey games doesn't instantly make you a misogynistic otaku pedophile.
 

TravelerSF

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Coincidentally I just happened to watch some One Piece (anime) just now and wondered if it actually succeeded in what Kojima tried to do.

One Piece is rooted in silliness, the main character is literally a rubberman. Gags and bizarre designs are commonplace and the main female characters have ridiculously unrealistic designs and often revealing clothing. Fanservice is also somewhat rampant, but the show is also very honest about it.

But what One Piece does right is that when it presents something serious, it does that properly. It takes a serious moment and doesn't try to dilute it with pointless fanservice, but treats it respectfully. In another words One Piece manages to properly separate it's serious elements from the fanservice; "Ok, here's some T&A, couple of jokes to ease the mood... Alright, enough about that, this is getting serious now so let's just focus on that for the time being..."
 

Brandon Shorter

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Saying the Japanese don't care what you want is a very big misconception. They have corporate mandates and pandering just like every other country in the world, they're not special.
IceForce said:
LifeCharacter said:
I always wonder if the people trotting out the "if you don't like it don't x it" argument understand that such a thing can be applied to all criticism. "Don't like on-disc DLC, don't buy the game!" "Don't like criticism, don't read it!" "Don't like this character or this story arc or this weapon or this enemy or this mission, don't play it!"
erttheking said:
If you don't like it don't play it is basically a term designed purely to say "I don't like what you have to say, shut up." How much of a cop out would it be if I just said to you "If you don't like my criticism, don't read it"?
I wonder how certain users on this site would react if I said "If you don't like the Gamers Are Dead articles, just don't read them."

Oh well, too late, I've said it now. Me and my big mouth.
Er... yeah they pander to "Japan" and "Japanese" mainstream audiences or niche audiences if there money to made, which creates usually more Japanese fan-service for different audiences niche and mainstream , from robots to boobs to shin chan and cuteness. Sorta the opposite of American gamer stereotypical demanding more realism ,grit ,less exaggeration ,less cuteness less sexiness and... less cuteness? from Japanese games (The Tekken uproar over lucky cho ? which they promptly ignored ) the people who complain about the werid campy elements of MGS series (Also ignored)

Just remove that thought.that they even think about you when they design there story or art in any sense or capacity , Complaint about FXV Cindy where outright ignored since the Japanese audiences liked her They never pander to Americans , or vocal minorities in America you don't exist .

It Require one really massive ego to think a completely different culture that speak a different language will even have a concern about what you think , they care about criticism from Japanese Consumer primarily , Not you lol. You might get more sympathy out of nintendo since they do aim there game squarely at international audiences ,but if a game is a failure in japan , it generally a failure for Nintendo to Mario game are still made so that they are popular with there local audiences first before they think about international audiences or "Americans"

if they want to make something for Americans they hire Americans to do it and it usually only for American or Westerner , which is exactly what square did with Laura croft and some time the sonic games which may or may not release in japan due to sonic low popularity .There are Literally tons of Busty attractive characters all over Japanese media from Kids cartoons to shonen , including jiggle physics .Fairy Tale (One Piece Religion enjoyed by all ages for the past 15 years in japan has a parade of some of the busty character I've seen in Japanese Entertainment ) Shin chan . Kids cartoon Conan , Bleach .
These are not "OTaku Shows " or Fap material , They dislike Otaku Shows because they suck , THey have no plot there usually "Cute girls doing cute things " , It not gokou saving the day or Luffy Grand Adventure or Conan solving a mystery , Monster titan threatening humanity . Western are usually the one to go (OH she has some cleavage , ) This must be pandering to otaku !or it hentai . Regardless if that true or not .



Japan doesn't hide this . There very upfront with "Japan for Japanese only and proud of Xenophobia" even outright refusing to release games on American consoles . , (They don't care if Xboxone has an audience in america it a failure in japan so yeah no Japanese games for xbox planet). They not only do not care but they will block foregin IPS , US IP from joining there online games and entertainment
 

Tilly

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blank0000 said:
That's vague and dismisses the question.

I'm asking, who here is a woman and what is their opinion on a character that is arguably an objectified representation of a women?
It dismisses the question on legitimate grounds. If women have a variety of positions on a given issues, simply asking for a few people to give you their view on it is completely meaningless and will likely give you a distorted view based on the type of people who happen to be in the place you're asking, and just the random chance of what their views happen to be. (ask any political question on 5 different forums and you'll get 5 different answers, this stuff varies more than you would otherwise realise)

I'm a woman and I think the design is a bit silly (as is the justification for it) but I don't buy into the assumptions behind the concept of "objectification" that you're wanting to push. All sexual attraction is objectification. It's natural and normal and people who use it to be synonymous with "wrong" are doing so based on poor reasoning. If you want to frame it more in the sense of "are too many gaming characters sexualised?", I think that's a much more well-formed question. But "is having this 1 sexualised character wrong?" is a silly question. No, it's not. Variety is good and people who don't like it don't have to play it.
 

Jake Martinez

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Tilly said:
I'm a woman and I think the design is a bit silly (as is the justification for it) but I don't buy into the assumptions behind the concept of "objectification" that you're wanting to push. All sexual attraction is objectification. It's natural and normal and people who use it to be synonymous with "wrong" are doing so based on poor reasoning. If you want to frame it more in the sense of "are too many gaming characters sexualised?", I think that's a much more well-formed question. But "is having this 1 sexualised character wrong?" is a silly question. No, it's not. Variety is good and people who don't like it don't have to play it.
It's nice to see that someone understands the difference between the reductionist logic that's getting tossed around and the actual questions that ought to be asked. I get extremely frustrated by this myself because while I have many reasons to not be a fan of someone like Anita Sarkeesian, the one thing that drives me up the wall is how her "tropes vs." series completely screws up this important question by focusing on cherry-picked game content.

As you succinctly put it - a single instance of sexualization, or even an appearance of a sexist trope, in a piece of media isn't something for anyone to get upset about. Instead, you need to look at the breadth of all media and ask yourself questions like, "Is this the ONLY WAY women are allowed to be portrayed in media?"

After all, a single instance of anything isn't necessarily a problem, especially in art. In some movies there will be a black character who is a gangster, or a blonde secretary that is a bimbo. In the context of this movie, they're just a character in that particular film and a piece of it's overall artistic expression. Most of us wouldn't say that a movie that has a villain in it that is a rapist means that a movie promotes rape, so why would we say a movie with an unflattering female portrayal in it is sexist?

However, if everyone is doing this - making it so that every black guy is a gangster or every woman is a blonde bimbo secretary, then it becomes a trend that is likely due to cultural opinions and in that context needs to be addressed.

Frankly, I feel that the South Park episode the other night was decidedly on the nose with the "PC Bros". There seems to me that there are a lot of people who are waving the "PC Banner" these days who are essentially brain dead meatheads that just recite buzzwords and pat each other on the back in some sort of strange social capital game. Certainly, very few people want to actually address issues, you know, ones that might take actual intelligence to talk about. At least not when it's oh so convenient for them to jab their meaty fingers at a video game character and go, "oh that's too sexy! misogyny!!!"
 

Danny Dowling

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erttheking said:
Danny Dowling said:
If you don't like it don't play it is basically a term designed purely to say "I don't like what you have to say, shut up." How much of a cop out would it be if I just said to you "If you don't like my criticism, don't read it"?

Saying the Japanese don't care what you want is a very big misconception. They have corporate mandates and pandering just like every other country in the world, they're not special.

Oh, and just about every discussion about sexism we've had recently has been about people complaining about sexism. No one who seems to find things sexist makes threads about these, they only go to already existing discussions. If people are tired of talking about sexism, then they should stop constantly bringing the topic up.
You're right! I genuinely don't care for the opinions of the people posting here regarding Quiet, so I'll choose now not to read it. Thanks!
 

Tilly

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Jake Martinez said:
It's nice to see that someone understands the difference between the reductionist logic that's getting tossed around and the actual questions that ought to be asked. I get extremely frustrated by this myself because while I have many reasons to not be a fan of someone like Anita Sarkeesian, the one thing that drives me up the wall is how her "tropes vs." series completely screws up this important question by focusing on cherry-picked game content.

As you succinctly put it - a single instance of sexualization, or even an appearance of a sexist trope, in a piece of media isn't something for anyone to get upset about. Instead, you need to look at the breadth of all media and ask yourself questions like, "Is this the ONLY WAY women are allowed to be portrayed in media?"
Yep, that's my exact problem with Sarkeesian too. She quantifies absolutely nothing she's saying. Even if I were to agree with some of her positions, which I would on a few of them, there's just nothing of value there. She presents everything as equally ubiquitous through her cherry picking a few examples.
The only sensible reaction anyone who's trained to think statistically can possibly have to her videos is that all she's demonstrated is that there are possibly negative tropes in about 0.1% of games. Which I know isn't what she's trying to say. She's trying to say "these examples are representative of the whole". But we have no way of knowing that given that no-one's done the analysis of the data.

I never get why these people can't see the importance of this distinction. If you changed the context, people immediately see its importance. Claim 1: 100 people in the US currently have cancer. Claim 2: 50% of the US population currently has cancer.
One of those just isn't a legitimate problem and I'm not sure why so many people don't generalize that logic.
 

wulf3n

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IceForce said:
LifeCharacter said:
I always wonder if the people trotting out the "if you don't like it don't x it" argument understand that such a thing can be applied to all criticism. "Don't like on-disc DLC, don't buy the game!" "Don't like criticism, don't read it!" "Don't like this character or this story arc or this weapon or this enemy or this mission, don't play it!"
erttheking said:
If you don't like it don't play it is basically a term designed purely to say "I don't like what you have to say, shut up." How much of a cop out would it be if I just said to you "If you don't like my criticism, don't read it"?
I wonder how certain users on this site would react if I said "If you don't like the Gamers Are Dead articles, just don't read them."

Oh well, too late, I've said it now. Me and my big mouth.
It's a valid point though. Everyone would be a lot happier and friendlier if people just steered clear of the things they don't like.
 

BadNewDingus

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Heh. I think she's hot. I don't care about people calling me a loser for saying that. It's not like I'm gonna start humping my screen whenever she is on, though. I believe people are just so damn bored these days that the only thing we could do on auto-pilot is ***** about things. It's so easy, kids do it.