Why is The Witcher allowed to portray heterosexual male sexuality while Kojima gets grilled over it?

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

MGS has both more powerful awesome female chars and more incredibly objectified and perved up ones than the witcher does. This in theory evens out but when you have uninformed idiots looking at something to be mad about it sadly doesn't work as well.


Like there's this one part in mgs1 where this girl is in a bathroom changing and if you reach her within a very short time window (which you normally won't do cause you don't know she's there and you have to be careful for enemies) she'll be without pants on. Another time you get examined by a sexy female doctor and you get to press a button to look at where snake is looking and in certain bits of it he's looking at her physique and whatnot. It does silly pervy stuff like that to make it more titillating while the witcher is just straight up "artistic sex scenes" which to me is actually quite boring lol.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Japanese culture is the target-du-jour for SJW outrage. Simple as that.

 

[Kingjackl]

The Witcher has been criticized for it's portrayal of women in the past. Currency is a factor here. The last Witcher game came out in 2010, while we've had two Metal Gear games released since then, one of which (Ground Zeroes) was notorious for the way it exploited it's main female character. Not to mention the controversy with Quiet.

Now that the Witcher 3 is out, we can expect the discussion to swing back toward it.As a matter of fact, Polygon's review of Wild Hunt drew specific attention to this issue. Similar to the more recent Metal Gear games, the main issue was how it depicted women as victims of violence (sexual assault included) and objects of pandering.

 

[Angelblaze]

At least in the Witcher they tend to be relatively clothed when not fucking Geralt. Quiet looks like a trashy whore all the time and the Witcher has gotten shit.

Plus the Witcher is based off of adult novels and, up til now, hasn't been the widespread game that MGS has.

MGS is more...'tv audience' mainstream where as Witcher is somewhat niche. That and, the Witcher has had flak, its just that we're kind of all used to its bullshit by now. But a girl in revealing, meaningless clothing in the middle of a war field in MGS is somewhat new.

To put it this way: MGS is the Marvel to Witcher's DC.

MGS can go into some dark themes and be considered childish because its done dumb things in the past.

Witcher is some what realistically dark, henceforth we take it more seriously from the get go.

MGS has a character that can run on top of missiles okay? Even if Ground Zeroes or whatever was super dark, MGS switches from ridiculous to grim to ridiculous and grim more often then 'Don't Hug Me I'm Scared' with just as much time between scenes to absorb the impact.

The Witcher essentially let you collect sexy pics of the ladies you banged. It holds its sexuality pretty damn high, like a fucking flag okay?

 

[Kwak]

As a matter of fact, Polygon's review of Wild Hunt drew specific attention to this issue. Similar to the more recent Metal Gear games, the main issue was how it depicted women as victims of violence (sexual assault included) and objects of pandering.

A critique of that critique by the creator of Ethan Carter.
https://medium.com/@adrianchm/the-boy-who-cried-white-wolf-on-polygon-s-the-witcher-3-review-f7ac8d7f0a5

 

[Frankster]

Get laid, please God!

I'd have loved action figures with squeezable bits like this when I was younger ITT (heck I had a stressball in the form of a boob...Which curiously my female friends loved to squeeze more then the guys). Don't really collect figures but if someone were to buy me the quiet toy as a gift, I'd have a laugh and proudly display it on my desk.
Anyways if you're up for supplying me with/helping me get some tail, I won't say no

 

[BarryMcCociner]

I wasn't aware that "heterosexual male sexuality" consisted of groping action figures with specially made squishy boobs.

Clearly I have been doing it wrong all these years.

Um, a taste for breasts is almost ubiquitous in heterosexual male sexuality.

1. I like boobs and I think a squishy boobed action figure is stupid.

2. Some people prefer asses.

1. Doesn't matter if it's stupid, if you think it's stupid then I'm not gonna force you to buy it.

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OawrlVoQqSs

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Why do people constantly try to spin a narrative of hypocrisy/unfair treatment around criticisms by comparing it to something else that should have had a similar treatment, and then completely fail by comparing it to something else that did receive the same treatment?

The Witcher series has been constantly bombarded with criticism over it's depiction of women, so it's just plain wrong to claim it's been given a free pass while poor old Kojima is being singled out.

It's just like when people where criticising Hatred, the fans screamed "what about GTA, manhunt and postal?", ignoring the fact that these were massively controversial in their time, and are still infamous to this day.

 

[Kwak]

Why do people constantly try to spin a narrative of hypocrisy/unfair treatment around criticisms by comparing it to something else that should have had a similar treatment, and then completely fail by comparing it to something else that did receive the same treatment?

The Witcher series has been constantly bombarded with criticism over it's depiction of women, so it's just plain wrong to claim it's been given a free pass while poor old Kojima is being singled out.

It's just like when people where criticising Hatred, the fans screamed "what about GTA, manhunt and postal?", ignoring the fact that these were massively controversial in their time, and are still infamous to this day.

Yeah the thread title is misguided in its assertion, which isn't really well-worded or balanced. Maybe it depends on being more familiar with the neo-gaf thread it's based on.
It should at least be framed as a non-leading question - 'Is MGS's sexual-content criticised differently to other mature-themed games from different studios?' or something like that.

Its premise is bit premature; all you had to do was wait for polygon's review of the witcher to get some criticism to compare it to, though whether the witcher is really a representation of heterosexual male sexuality is open to interpretation. And the witcher's criticism isn't based on having merchandise with squishy naughty bits, so they're still not necessarily equivalent.

A doll with squishy boobs doesn't automatically equate to 'heterosexual-male sexuality' either, as boobs are enjoyed by other sexualities too. Boobs are nice and pleasant to touch, and it doesn't always have to be a sexual touch.
The criticism against the doll seems stupid though, especially if the squishy bits have been used in the past on male dolls as well - it's just the technology of doll-making at this point in time.

 

[sumanoskae]

The simplest answer I can conceive is this; people who claim to support something without understanding it's principals (In this case, pseudo-feminists) tend to become fixated on the superficial trappings of it. In other words, because MGS is more overt in it's portrayal of the female form, whilst The Witcher is comparatively tame, people make the common "This game has attractive nubile women" = "This game hates women" mistake.

They see a female character who's clearly intended to be sexy, and they make the connection between this and other times people have gotten offended, so they figure they ought to take offense.

As for my opinion on the game itself. I've played both Witcher 1 and 2 multiple times, and I can't remember ever encountering anything offensive to women. "But what about the playing cards in the first game?!" you cry. Well, I don't really see what the problem is. In my playthroughs, Geralt never disrespects any of these women, and the encounters were all entirely consensual.

Geralt simply enjoys casual sex, and women in turn enjoy his company. He does have that whole "Stoic, muscular badass" thing going for him.

All the complaints I usually see about Geralt's behavior amount to slut shaming; people just get on his case because he has sex with lots of different women; entirely mutual sexual encounters with women he is nothing but decent to. This criticism smacks of dogmatic puritanism.

As for Geralt's relationship with Triss, I always just thought this was an aspect of their characters. She doesn't seem to have a problem with his promiscuity (Which is totally optional, by the way). I do suspect this has more to do with technical convenience, and the team wanting to avoid having her cut ties with Geralt and the story losing an important character. I wouldn't be surprised if she put her foot down at some point in Wild Hunt.

As for MGS, I've only ever played Guns of the Patriots. The endings to the Beauty boss fights are very odd, but I can't exactly call them sexist because they're so tone dissonant and incoherent; I can't really assign ANY meaning to them. The only purpose I can attribute to why they were conceived is gratuitous T&A, and I can't really call that sexist in and of itself.

Other than that, I can't think of any problems. The female characters don't receive any less respect or attention than the men, they generally have their own agendas and arcs, and female stereotypes are never used to characterize them.

Both games render their female cast quite lovingly, I admit, but I'm not going to attack that practice in a vacuum. It's important to not confound the incendiary trappings of sexism with sexism itself.