Touche.wulf3n said:
Well, not just AS new. We've had a few good ones before Tomb Raider... or even Mirror's Edge.
Why the "big boobs" "absurd female design" still exists?
- Thread starter nightmare_gorilla
- Start date
Well, not just AS new. We've had a few good ones before Tomb Raider... or even Mirror's Edge.
Can I ask why women need to be 'empowered'? I'm always hearing this.Rebel_Raven said:
Surely empowerment implies women need to be elevated, it implies they can't reach that position on their own merit and need help. That simply isn't true, no successful woman I can name has required empowerment to reach her goals, she was simply good at what she did.
Lets take literature as an example, did Mary Shelley or J.K Rowling need to be empowered and artificially elevated in order to succeed in the medium, or were they simply good at what they did, and deserving of success? I find it sexist to imply that there needs to be a quota, that women must make up exactly 50% regardless of their contributions.
Can I ask why women need to force change in an established medium rather than simply creating their own? Why do women not make games for women, made by women, to create an industry and a medium that caters to women? Minecraft, Fez, Meatboy, Binding of Isaac, FTL, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Hotline Miami, massive indie successes prove that people can succeed in this medium on their own merit and their own skill, so why do women specifically need to be empowered and artificially elevated?
I don't believe women are any less creative or skilled than men, and I don't believe they face any barriers of any kind, the videogame industry simply appeals more to men than to women. As long as the male audience is larger than the female audience, games will continue to cater to the majority. As more and more women show interest perhaps that will change.
Personally see nothing wrong with it. Other than the Sorceress looking pretty damn hot, nothing about her is sexist. She handles her own just as well as the next guy. To complain about her lack of armor, considering she is a magic user, considering her opponents are ogres, dragons and demons is silly. To say it isn't practical for a magic user to wear heavy armor of some kind is to ignore how impractical it is to solo fight a dragon the size of a T-Rex or larger. The very force from such a creature would easily kill a person from one strike.
Complaining about Sorceress lack of armor and ignore the other front line fighters of Dwarf and Amazon is odd. Yes, fighter has armor...but he doesn't benefit much from it at all. Long story short, in most Fantasy based game any armor is decoration at best. In no way shape or form in a practical situation should a person believe metal armor will protect them from attacks from dragons and demons who cause tremors when they walk.
In situations like that I think of the fun scene from Hurt Locker.
If I'm gonna face a Dragon that can crush me with a single attack. I'm gonna make sure I'm as comfy as possible cause that armor is not going to protect me from the attack shock. I'd be out there like this guy.
Complaining about Sorceress lack of armor and ignore the other front line fighters of Dwarf and Amazon is odd. Yes, fighter has armor...but he doesn't benefit much from it at all. Long story short, in most Fantasy based game any armor is decoration at best. In no way shape or form in a practical situation should a person believe metal armor will protect them from attacks from dragons and demons who cause tremors when they walk.
In situations like that I think of the fun scene from Hurt Locker.
If I'm gonna face a Dragon that can crush me with a single attack. I'm gonna make sure I'm as comfy as possible cause that armor is not going to protect me from the attack shock. I'd be out there like this guy.
Hey, hey, you forgot to add the romance novels that women make for women. Those are very good that I even read them once in awhile.Dansrage said:
I think Ashley Burch put it best, "You've got a sea of titties...that's just to many titties. We need some nice, well rounded titties to make the other titties awesome".IllumInaTIma said:
...Or maybe Anthony Burch's translation is better, "It's not the over-sexualisation that's bad, rather the lack of well developed females that's the issue".
Yeah, I think I've said that a few times on here as well. Honestly I'm not actually sick of or relying on the big breasts and over sexy women just cause I'm completely indifferent on the whole subject (I do like me seeing some rage from both sides on this thread tho), but I can see why other people are getting sick of it. Eat enough chocolate and you're gonna spew.IllumInaTIma said:
Because a videogame character is only as empowered as the developer allows, thus empowerment.Dansrage said:
Everyone needs some encouragement to be succcessful, don't they? Rolemodels? Thus some level of empowerment.
Wouldn't it be nice if videogames showed women on power trips, and in fantasies more often as the lead star? We'd get more wonderful, wonderful variety in gaming on top of that, wouldn't we?
Quota? I never said there needed to be a quota, did I? I'm not assigning anyone anything aside from "I want better female representation than we have now."
I'm not passing out checklists, here, am I?
I'm certainly not insane enough to expect a 50/50 split in videogames! Come on, lets be realistic here. Not everyone wanting more, and better representation wants 50/50. it's a nice ideal, but I don't see it happening.
You do realize making games isn't cheap, or easy, right? If that were the case, -everyone- would make their own games. I really -hate- the "make your own games and stop complaining!" route. Frankly it's not my job to make games. I'm not the ones desperately trying to have gaming be seen as a mature media.
Wow, if you don't believe women face barriers men don't in the gaming industry... wow.
http://kotaku.com/investigation-a-video-game-studio-from-hell-511872642
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/women-use-twitter-expose-video-game-industry-sexism-1C7283842
Or swim in a sea of titties for long enough and you gonna drown. God damn it Ash.bug_of_war said:
Oh and to say a woman would never wear something sexy should she have the "reason" is to never been to U.S. during Halloween. You see both men and women in great figures showing as much skin as legally possible.
In a fantasy setting where armor gives little to no real defense. Might as well go out like Red Sonya and Conan the Barbarian, if you have the figure for it why hide it?
In a fantasy setting where armor gives little to no real defense. Might as well go out like Red Sonya and Conan the Barbarian, if you have the figure for it why hide it?
I trust Kotaku's opinion on feminism about as much as I trust FOX News to report on Muslims.Rebel_Raven said:
The "sexism" in the gaming industry in my experience comes from women expecting better treatment than everyone else simply for being women and using sexism as an excuse. I've seen the Twitter wars, I've seen women attempt to maliciously ruin men's careers over baseless allegations of sexism or harassment, and I won't fall for the crocodile tears.
People like Anita Sarkeesian or Richards and the 'Donglegate' scandal prove that a significant number of women in the tech industry use allegations of sexism as a tool to get their way. Sarkeesian has of course been torn to shreds by the public and Richards was fired for her conduct. This doesn't demonstrate that the industry hates women, it demonstrates that 'everyone' hates a certain kind of person who attempts to capitalize on outrage for their own selfish purposes.
My hobby is not a medium for you, or anyone else, to push their political or social agenda, it has no place in escapism.
Anyone can succeed in the videogame industry, the success of indie titles proves that, having breasts or not has no place in a medium where success is determined by results.
Ya know, I wouldn't really know. I'm not a feminist. I'm not a sarkeesianite, either. I'm just a gamer wanting better representation in number, and quality of females in games. Especially female protagonists. This will no doubt add some variety to the endless sea of white 20-30 something dudes that star in almost every last game.Dansrage said:
It's nto my job to make games. I am in no way qualified, either in talent, or vision to do this. Is it wrong of me to ask people who's job it is to make games to do these things?
And to stop hampering the development of female protagonists?
It's fine to be skeptical, but ignoring it when it's true is another matter, I'd say.
Ad hominem attacks won't accomplish much, either.
Further, you don't own your hobby any more than anyone else. You can hate what people do all you want, but opinions will be spoken, for better or worse.
Breasts, dongs, etc. has nothing to do with success in games, it's true. Talent does. Expecting everyone that's unhappy to have this talent (Or the time, and money and resources to hone it) is insane, though.
The whole "make your own game!" argument is wearing pretty thin on me the way it's thrown about without consideration of anything but the desire to shut the person it's thrown at up.
I basically say that, too, with many people, over, and over again. And yet, I often see those same people using the same arguments I pretty much left them unable to defend over, and over, and over again. It's like they're bored, or trying to troll, or suqeezing us dry of out information.IllumInaTIma said:
but last of us kinda proves my point in that they didn't want a girl on the cover, because people don't buy games with women on the cover, at least that's how the marketing team perceived it apparently. yeah it's a huge success, good, buy that. but you can find plenty of examples of well written strong females in games because it's such a broad medium. and each and every one is praised for being more or less an anomaly to the normal. they are the exception that proves the rule. no game company believes the female gamer is a strong enough demographic to market exclusively to it. and sales figures back that up. these are not the tits of oppression or sexism, they are the tits of mass appeal and market strategies.Fox12 said:
that seems fair, but can you describe exactly what it is you're after? more sensual males? insane muscles? perfect complexions? heroism? 'just being nice' cause I really don't know ( as a guy myself ) what it is women actually look for and what I can directly compare between the sexes, if anything.TehCookie said:
basically what's the male equivalent of T+A curves and a nice smile?
do tell.
It's because an "overwhelming majority" DOESN'T hate the ridiculously-oversexed paradigm. A decent portion of the game-buying public doesn't give a rat's ass what goes on the cover of their games, and will play pretty much anything they hear is good. A small(er) subset of these actively seeks out games with that design. The group of people who are genuinely upset enough with the standard female design in game development is a depressingly-small subset. The number of people who are of the game-playing sort who are willing to actually BOYCOTT a game over its art design is smaller still. Sex still sells, and likely always will. This is a fundamental truth that anyone selling stuff to human beings will have to accept. The best (ABSOLUTE BEST) result we can hope for is that we get sexiness aimed at pleasing everyone instead of just the straight, white college-aged men the entire market panders towards right now. (that's not sexiness that appeals to everyone; that's dumb and highly-improbable. I mean instances of sexy characters that appeal to people OTHER than the straight-white-male-blablablah.)
There's nothing inherently wrong with big boobs. No serious feminist critic has ever or will ever make that argument. The issue with a lot of these designs we see popping up is the abject commodification of female anatomy for suspect and frankly dehumanising purposes.
Furthermore, anyone claiming that video games as a culture and industry isn't still horrendously sexist by any reasonable standard is being willfully ignorant of sexual politics.
Furthermore, anyone claiming that video games as a culture and industry isn't still horrendously sexist by any reasonable standard is being willfully ignorant of sexual politics.
Because men are silly and like big wobbly titties that don't exist in real life except on particularly monstrous porn stars or fat people. And the industry only cares about men even though women give them a fair chunk (maybe 1/4 since the other 1/4 that's supposedly female is apparently ALL Casual (-.-)) of their income and make up a fair chunk of their audience and thus should be equally catered for. Where in lies the problem for women. Since gamer's don't tend to care if their women characters are tiny lumps of wobbly flesh, there's no reason to really have it since it offends female gamer's if its all we get and see everywhere.
Well, let me start by saying that I'm not offended, but sort of casually nonplussed by cleavage babes in gaming. If I see eye candy I'll be likely to think the game is shooting for a lowest-common-denominator, "dudebro" type of target market and it's not going to be my thing. However...
I'm confused by the repeated contention that this is "everywhere". In my gaming life it seldom comes up. The last time I saw it was the eye-rollingly ridiculous alien stripper armour that Kerrigan was dressed in in HotS. I've probably dabbled in 20 different games since then without a demeaned female in sight. I'd say that's an easily maintained average; if you name one game which has this issue I can name you 20 that don't. Sucks if the one that has it is a game you desperately want, but very easy to avoid if it bothers you. I mean, if this problem was truly "everywhere" and we were all "burnt out" on it, why is this debate centred around a fringe game like Dragon's Crown? There's a lot of bigger games out there (and smaller ones, too, if that's your thing).
Furthermore, I would say that Dragon's Crown has more mitigation here than something like stripper-Kerrigan or Arctic-bikini Sejuani, because it IS in context. Not the context of the story of Dragon's Crown (whatever the hell that may be) but the context of a game with an extravagant art style where everyone's body is disproportionate. If the sorceress was shaped like Ellie, or new Lara, she would actually look out of place. That's context for you right there. I can absolutely understand people being put off by the art style, but to my mind, in the monotonous world of modern AAA gaming at least it HAS an art style. I mean, how can you say 'not this again' when none of the characters look like anyone I've ever seen in a game before, ever? If you were so inclined, you could claim this game as breaking new ground for women in games on the basis that the Amazon is the first genuinely, gloriously ugly female playable character I can ever recall seeing.
But no-one notices the ugly girl 'cause they're too busy watching the boobs jiggle ;P
I'm confused by the repeated contention that this is "everywhere". In my gaming life it seldom comes up. The last time I saw it was the eye-rollingly ridiculous alien stripper armour that Kerrigan was dressed in in HotS. I've probably dabbled in 20 different games since then without a demeaned female in sight. I'd say that's an easily maintained average; if you name one game which has this issue I can name you 20 that don't. Sucks if the one that has it is a game you desperately want, but very easy to avoid if it bothers you. I mean, if this problem was truly "everywhere" and we were all "burnt out" on it, why is this debate centred around a fringe game like Dragon's Crown? There's a lot of bigger games out there (and smaller ones, too, if that's your thing).
Furthermore, I would say that Dragon's Crown has more mitigation here than something like stripper-Kerrigan or Arctic-bikini Sejuani, because it IS in context. Not the context of the story of Dragon's Crown (whatever the hell that may be) but the context of a game with an extravagant art style where everyone's body is disproportionate. If the sorceress was shaped like Ellie, or new Lara, she would actually look out of place. That's context for you right there. I can absolutely understand people being put off by the art style, but to my mind, in the monotonous world of modern AAA gaming at least it HAS an art style. I mean, how can you say 'not this again' when none of the characters look like anyone I've ever seen in a game before, ever? If you were so inclined, you could claim this game as breaking new ground for women in games on the basis that the Amazon is the first genuinely, gloriously ugly female playable character I can ever recall seeing.
But no-one notices the ugly girl 'cause they're too busy watching the boobs jiggle ;P