Women in games are not systematically oppressed - a vertical slice

[Netrigan]

Given the game is set in a Eastern European medieval fantasy world, I would say there is a fair reason to include rape.

Know I'm taking this a bit out of context, but while it makes sense for X to happen, doesn't mean it should be there. If we play the realism card, then the women in a medieval setting wouldn't conform to modern standards of beauty. Sort of like real gladiators would look more the rancor keeper in Return of the Jedi rather than the sculpted physiques on display in the recent Spartacus series.

Simply put, even in historical fictions, the creators sculpt the world to include those bits which they want and eradicate the bits they don't. The statues in Ancient Greece aren't brightly painted, Medieval castles aren't filled with colorful tapestries, Ancient Egypt isn't filled with garish colors... all in defiance of reality. The details are so frequently gotten wrong because we're so used to seeing the wrong details.

And such is the case with rape. It's there because the writers chose to put it there. And it's an extremely tricky thing to write about and most writers who attempt it are no where near up to the task. If you didn't put rape in your medieval fantasy world, would people be bitching about it? Almost certainly not. There's no real reason to put it in there. There's a lot of common crimes throughout history that kind of get skated past because they're so hard to deal with within common narratives. How do you deal with child prostitution? Incest? Infanticide? 20th Century English work houses? And all the other nasty business which commonly gets swept under the rug in historicals.

 

[GamerAddict7796]

Just gonna add that in the TF2 'verse, the entire world is controlled by one woman playing 2 senile gravel barons who is powerful enough to convince the richest and most powerful mann in the world to do her bidding and who's right hand man is a woman who conducts assassinations, is more than willing and capable to storm a base by herself with a shotgun, runs the mercs during the Robot Wars and is considered one of the guys among the mercs.

I'm sure that would qualify as progressive.

 

[JimB]

Would this be better?

Sure, why wouldn't it be? She's standing like a person rather than a mannequin in a Victoria's Secret window.

I dunno, her boobs look bigger?

Since so far as I can tell, nothing about the composition of that piece is begging me to stare at her tits, I don't care what size they are. The image you provided seems to treat them as a fact of life rather than a selling point.

However, to be fair, I don't think it'd be very hard for me to bend my body in the way Triss was in that first picture.

I think anyone with no spinal or joint degeneration could do it. That's not really the point. The point is trying to figure out why the person portrayed would do it, and the only answer is, "So the audience can stare at her secondary sexual characteristics."

 

[endtherapture]

Given the game is set in a Eastern European medieval fantasy world, I would say there is a fair reason to include rape.

Know I'm taking this a bit out of context, but while it makes sense for X to happen, doesn't mean it should be there. If we play the realism card, then the women in a medieval setting wouldn't conform to modern standards of beauty. Sort of like real gladiators would look more the rancor keeper in Return of the Jedi rather than the sculpted physiques on display in the recent Spartacus series.

Simply put, even in historical fictions, the creators sculpt the world to include those bits which they want and eradicate the bits they don't. The statues in Ancient Greece aren't brightly painted, Medieval castles aren't filled with colorful tapestries, Ancient Egypt isn't filled with garish colors... all in defiance of reality. The details are so frequently gotten wrong because we're so used to seeing the wrong details.

And such is the case with rape. It's there because the writers chose to put it there. And it's an extremely tricky thing to write about and most writers who attempt it are no where near up to the task. If you didn't put rape in your medieval fantasy world, would people be bitching about it? Almost certainly not. There's no real reason to put it in there. There's a lot of common crimes throughout history that kind of get skated past because they're so hard to deal with within common narratives. How do you deal with child prostitution? Incest? Infanticide? 20th Century English work houses? And all the other nasty business which commonly gets swept under the rug in historicals.

It depends what kind of story you are trying to tell. If you're trying to tell a high fantasy epic, then it does not make sense to have elements such as rape within the story. However if you're going for a more grounded, dark fantasy, then this will help to enforce the reality of the world and draw you in. That is why rape feels in place in Game of Thrones but if you shoved some rape into Lord of the Rings it'd feel awkward. The tone has got to fit. To continue this tone, The Witcher 2 is a dark game, dirty and muddy in artstyle, and not all of the women are perfect bikini babes, a lot of them are fat and ugly, some have rotten teeth, all have some kind of blemish on their skin. It's a background detail that adds to the world.

In addition, infanticide is also hinted at in The Witcher, alongside ethnic cleansing and lots of other dark things. They're not only adding rape in to be "edgy", they're adding a whole lot of dark stuff to "muddy" the world and make it appear complicated, dark and morally confused, which fits in with one of the game mechanics, namely the element of choice.

 

[Vigormortis]

Half Life 2 series: Male protagonist but Alyx is one of the best female characters out there. NOT SEXIST.

That was untill Episode 2 rolled around and Eli Vance more or less says 'Here, take my daughter'. Half-Life 2 wasn't sexist what with female resistance fighters running around all over the place, but Alyx... Yeah, I don't know.

But that's....not at all how it went down.

It's odd to me that that's how some have interpreted the events in Episode 2. (you're not the first I've heard say as much)

'Course, it's not the strangest interpretation I've heard of events in the Half-Life universe. I knew someone who thought Gordon Freeman (i.e. the player) was actually an infected carrier from the Left 4 Dead series, and that all of the events he was witnessing were nothing more than fever-induced hallucinations.

You should have heard his long-winded ramblings on what bits of the story lead him to this conclusion.

Granted, he came into the Half-Life games after playing Left 4 Dead, but still...

 

[Netrigan]

Given the game is set in a Eastern European medieval fantasy world, I would say there is a fair reason to include rape.

Know I'm taking this a bit out of context, but while it makes sense for X to happen, doesn't mean it should be there. If we play the realism card, then the women in a medieval setting wouldn't conform to modern standards of beauty. Sort of like real gladiators would look more the rancor keeper in Return of the Jedi rather than the sculpted physiques on display in the recent Spartacus series.

Simply put, even in historical fictions, the creators sculpt the world to include those bits which they want and eradicate the bits they don't. The statues in Ancient Greece aren't brightly painted, Medieval castles aren't filled with colorful tapestries, Ancient Egypt isn't filled with garish colors... all in defiance of reality. The details are so frequently gotten wrong because we're so used to seeing the wrong details.

And such is the case with rape. It's there because the writers chose to put it there. And it's an extremely tricky thing to write about and most writers who attempt it are no where near up to the task. If you didn't put rape in your medieval fantasy world, would people be bitching about it? Almost certainly not. There's no real reason to put it in there. There's a lot of common crimes throughout history that kind of get skated past because they're so hard to deal with within common narratives. How do you deal with child prostitution? Incest? Infanticide? 20th Century English work houses? And all the other nasty business which commonly gets swept under the rug in historicals.

It depends what kind of story you are trying to tell. If you're trying to tell a high fantasy epic, then it does not make sense to have elements such as rape within the story. However if you're going for a more grounded, dark fantasy, then this will help to enforce the reality of the world and draw you in. That is why rape feels in place in Game of Thrones but if you shoved some rape into Lord of the Rings it'd feel awkward. The tone has got to fit. To continue this tone, The Witcher 2 is a dark game, dirty and muddy in artstyle, and not all of the women are perfect bikini babes, a lot of them are fat and ugly, some have rotten teeth, all have some kind of blemish on their skin. It's a background detail that adds to the world.

In addition, infanticide is also hinted at in The Witcher, alongside ethnic cleansing and lots of other dark things. They're not only adding rape in to be "edgy", they're adding a whole lot of dark stuff to "muddy" the world and make it appear complicated, dark and morally confused, which fits in with one of the game mechanics, namely the element of choice.

I don't want to comment directly on Witcher because I've not played the game, but it really does come down to writing.

Game of Thrones hasn't been above criticism for its sexual content. I recall one commentator having a field day with Martin's breast-centric description of Daenerys wearing a dress. Something like her enjoying the sensation of the cloth as it moved across her breasts. Point being, it was needlessly sexually charged and the sort of thing which almost never happens to male characters. A Scottish man never takes a moment to enjoy the cool updraft upon his scrotum while he's out in the fields wearing a kilt; yet female characters are always enjoying the soft caress of the fabric across their bodies. And he's very careful about who gets raped. Arya probably would have been raped somewhere along the way (or prostituted herself for food or money), but "realism" takes a holiday in her part of the story... because the alternative would be too damn horrible.

As for rape, I've seen a pretty massive sea change in how it's portrayed in our media. When I was a kid, the idea of a woman being chased around a desk portrayed attempted rape as a comical device (Barbara from Doctor Who was especially prone to this in the 60s). If a woman was raped in a drama, then the story was almost never about her; casting the man as the victim who must get his bloody revenge on all those involved (see Charles Bronson in Deathwish). Early 80s saw a deeper understanding of the subject, but it mostly manifested itself in one-off well-meaning female-centric melodramas (on the TV show Hunter, his partner was raped several times over the course of the series so she could be seen figuring out how to deal with it). Frequently the rape is fairly graphic so it's on the edge of eroticism (I still have oddly fond childhood memories of a bouncy young lady flopping around during an attempted rape in opening of A Clockwork Orange). Just portraying rape as "bad" isn't enough. A bad writer can miss his intended target with incredibly ease and send the wrong message. If a writer knows his attitudes are outside the mainstream, he can make a point of saying all the "right things" in order to justify his demented fantasies being made flesh.

So writing is super, super important with a subject that affects so many people and is so emotionally devastating. If you set someone on fire in a movie, there's probably on a small number of people who have had direct experience with something like that happening and become uneasy. With rape, a whole lot more people are suddenly going to be experiencing a bunch of emotions the writer didn't plan on.

 

[Worgen]

I can't really speak for the other franchises listed but The Witcher 2? Really?
I can really speak from personal preferences, but that was the first game I stopped playing because of the way the game portrayed women. And I'm not usually so sensitive about such things.

I mean this is a game with collectable sex or romance cards.
http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Romance_cards

Like women were some kind of collectable or something.

That's the first Witcher game, the second game is a lot more progressive. It still has sex scene but female characters drive the entire plot along and are strong supporting characters who are female.

There are also no collectible sex cards. Please check your facts before posting.

Ah fair enough, my mistake then.
I'm kinda bothered by the way the franchise treats women in general it can be pretty troubling. That is partly why I can't feel excited for the next Witcher game.
And I guess that's fine, the game just isn't for me.

But the point still stands about the poor ways women are treated in the franchise and you would be better off listing another game to support your thesis. Perhaps the Portal franchise?

Women being treated piss poor as a part of a setting is not a problem. The women in the game are well written characters with motivations and complex character backgrounds. A medieval society with entirely politically and sexually liberated modern style women is not appropriate for the setting and you can't hold that against it.

Unless you think that films like Mississippi Burning or Malcolm X are inherently racist due to the fact they're set in America at a certain time period.

The problem is that everygame has the excuse that women being treated as background decoration is part of the setting. Its really easy to just make all the main characters of a game male and say that it wouldn't be appropriate for women to be in charge in really any setting. If its already a fantasy setting then why not have liberated modern style women? I mean, historically there have always been examples of powerful women but they tend to be pushed into the background as history moves on and a more male focused narrative starts coming to the forefront.

 

[gandhi the peacemake]

This is slightly off-topic, but there's a distinct difference between "systematic(ally)" and "systemic(ally)".

When sexism is done systematically, it is done in a very step-by-step manner. When sexism is done systemically, it is done across that entire system.

So... yeah. Misleading thread title.

More on topic (or, actually, just criticism of an argument):

Given you play as a supernatural mutant then ... actually I'm not even going to, that is just stupid. Your argument is so stupid it deserves the facepalm but nothing else. The setting of the game includes death, disease, famine and war...but the main character is not going to die at age 8 because there would be no game. Jesus christ, so stupid.

Calling the opposition's argument stupid doesn't mean it is, indeed, stupid. In fact, quite a bit of JimB's arguments were well-made and -argued. Your statement only serves to cast a shadow over your own arguments.

And while we're on it, who's to say that there couldn't be a game about Geralt being an 8-year old child dying of cholera? Certainly the player character being directly and adversely affected by the realities of the world in which he lives seems like it would be a better candidate for painting the "realism" you speak of in your defense of The Witcher than the rape that befalls secondary and tertiary female characters?

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Nice work professor, out of possibly 1000s of games your sample size of 26 kinda sorta fits your own personal definition of "not sexist".

I'll mail your findings out to Anita Sarkeesian; Supreme Queen of the Feminist Hive Mind. In the mean time, what scientific journals would you like your findings to be published in?

 

[nuclearday]

IMO, sexism, racism, nationalism, etc, if you add an -ism at the end it means hatred is present.

I believe you can joke about women, different races, different nations without meaning you hate them, it might make you a bit of an asshole, though that's not as bad as being a racist, a sexist or a nationalist...

People throw around words they don't understand, and people get offended easily.

Anita Sharkeesian, or hoever you spell her name, is what I call a fire starter. She gets offended or upset about something, and she deems it a crime, or villainous, or basically WRONG to do at all. Are video games like Mario, Skyrim, GTA, Saints Row racist? Are they REALLY sexist? Of course not. They do in no way, advocate the hatred of ANY kind of person. Are they representations of REAL LIFE? Of course not, they are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE.

Why then do people like Anita, claim that its harmful to real people? Fear, ignorance, it can be a multitude of reasons, whats important is that you educate yourself. Anyone who spends a good deal of time playing video games knows that whenever video games appear on the news and they claim we're being brainwashed into killing, that it's ridiculous. People need to likewise stop listening to people like Anita when she says we're being brainwashed into being sexist. It's just not true. We give her far too much attention, money, etc. and I suppose it stems from not properly thinking about and understanding these issues ourselves enough, and for that maybe we have fire starters like her to blame. She may only be making things worse, but at least she is making people stop and think. Once we all figure our as a society that games are Okay, that will be the end of it.

A movie, a book, a video game can have something in it that's not real. That's not normal. That's not ethical, that's not moral, that doesn't make it wrong. An artistic work usually aims to do one thing, tell a story, or, entertain you.

Anything that is made by people will be loved by certain people and hated by others, video games are not the exception. If you dislike a movie, book or game you shouldn't try to get it banned, censored or changed. That's not your right. Your right is to use that product and like it or not like it. You also have the right to make your own product. The imagination is a wonderful thing. Get to work.

That's... over-simplifying the issue.

For starters, you can watch those Tropes vs Women videos and see for yourself - she's not actually demonizing those games. And even goes out of her way specifically to state that she doesn't "hate" these games for conforming to existing stereotypes, and even that it's fundamentally okay to enjoy a game even if it has flaws.

The average pro-feminist gamer isn't holding bonfires made of Super Mario games any more than the average... (I don't know a non-insulting term for the converse view, actually) other gamer thinks that the proper way to respond to something they don't agree with is with lude comments and expletives.

Too often this conversation is couched in inaccurate and unrealistic absolutes. The level of mis-understanding and jumped conclusions that's taken place in response to what's really just a fairly dry school research paper read in front of a green screen would be hilarious - if we were talking about something I didn't feel was actually somewhat important and mattered.

This is what the communal conversation looks like from my end:

"Hey, you know how there's talk that maybe minorities should have better roles in videogames and how every character doesn't need to be a white guy? Well maybe we should also look at how women are portrayed and work toward a more inclusive gaming community as a whole. We could start by raising awareness and expanding the vocabulary of the average gamer to be more familiar with standard trends in gaming and giving them the tools to have a more critical eye towards these issues."

"Hey! Games are not sexist because Samus! I like Super Mario, don't tell me I should hate it for feminist standards that didn't exist for the industry decades ago!"

"It's true there are and have been good female characters in games now and in the past. But that doesn't mean it can't be better, right? I mean I like the graphics we have today, but I wouldn't mind seeing even better graphics, or better storytelling. And better characters is something everyone can get behind right?

Besides, I don't hate those games. I can have fun with and even love a game that has flaws. The objective isn't to vilify gaming, but raise awareness. If you're going to have a damsel in distress at least be aware that's what you're doing."

"But it's art, and it's a fantasy setting so women should be treated poorly in "

"Art is a great answer. But a good artist is at least aware of what they're doing. It's one thing to create something with a specific purpose with the full knowledge that's what you're doing, it's another to do so arbitrarily or through accident or ignorance.

As for setting - there is a (I thought obvious) distinction between how a character is treated by other characters within the story, and how a character is written and portrayed by the author. You can have a pro-feminist female character that is treated poorly by other characters. Of course you can. No one is saying otherwise. It's all about implementation, knowledge of what you're doing, and awareness of the subject."

And so on...

It's not an all-or-nothing gambit, here. No one's going to come take your video games away. I'm a feminist, sure. But I also own a copy of DOA Beach Volleyball. The issue is not that are specific examples that can be sighted for contributing to sexist tropes - it is the prevalence of such tropes and the general ignorance of their existence that's problematic.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

"It's true there are and have been good female characters in games now and in the past. But that doesn't mean it can't be better, right? I mean I like the graphics we have today, but I wouldn't mind seeing even better graphics, or better storytelling. And better characters is something everyone can get behind right?

I was nodding along until this part completely lost me.


Yes, we all want better characters. Most gamers don't care about the sex of the character, only if they're good or not. That being the case, equating "more female/minority characters" with "having better characters" is extremely wrong. No, having more female characters will not affect how good the characters we have are, not one bit. Having more minorities won't affect how good the character we have are, either. Female or minority characters aren't better than white male ones by definition. To imply that is beyond wrong.



We want good characters, that's it. That's IT. If you think the only way for characters to improve is for them to be more diverse rather than more, I dunno, interesting, better written, with good voice acting, in an interesting plot, you know, stuff that actually matters, you're not really in it for "better games overall" as you claim but rather to fight some political battle.

 

[TheIceQueen]

You could support games that are inclusive of all genders.

That doesn't end the "not a gamer/customer" argument, it attempts to ignore it by pushing it back a step.

I don't get what you mean...if you're not a gamer...why are you here? If you buy these sexist products and then complain about them...why not just not buy them? Consumer boycotts are an old practise.

Zachary Amaranth is talking about this sort of attitude: "Your requests are not reasonable, because you aren't customers, posting as customers that you feel more character diversity is in order. You are non customers, claiming you will continue to be non customers, until diversity is met."

Obviously, you've not displayed this argument yourself, at least I've not seen it from you, but it's a common enough one.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, right? No matter what side of the coin you're on, too.

 

[endtherapture]

Nice work professor, out of possibly 1000s of games your sample size of 26 kinda sorta fits your own personal definition of "not sexist".

I'll mail your findings out to Anita Sarkeesian; Supreme Queen of the Feminist Hive Mind. In the mean time, what scientific journals would you like your findings to be published in?

It's just a vertical slice. I'm a fairly typical gamer, so I was just taking the games installed on my computer and examining them. Of course I don't have time to analyse all 200 games in my Steam library. Just like political polls and scientific studies and questionnaires only can take a slice of people. Maybe if you helped out and subjected your installed games on Steam to a similar study then it would be a lot more constructive?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

You could support games that are inclusive of all genders.

That doesn't end the "not a gamer/customer" argument, it attempts to ignore it by pushing it back a step.

I don't get what you mean...if you're not a gamer...why are you here? If you buy these sexist products and then complain about them...why not just not buy them? Consumer boycotts are an old practise.

Zachary Amaranth is talking about this sort of attitude: "Your requests are not reasonable, because you aren't customers, posting as customers that you feel more character diversity is in order. You are non customers, claiming you will continue to be non customers, until diversity is met."

Obviously, you've not displayed this argument yourself, at least I've not seen it from you, but it's a common enough one.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, right? No matter what side of the coin you're on, too.

The issue I think this attitude stems from is one of random irrelevant people trying to change stuff. If you're not a customer, why do you wanna mess the stuff we like, know what I mean. If you're a customer, why are you supporting this if it's such a big deal.

Clearly, you can like something and still have a problem with an aspect of it. It also is true however that if you do still keep buying it, your problem can't be all that major or you would cease to do so. Everyone has a peeve with some aspect of some game they generally like and keep supporting. Nobody else makes a political crusade of it though. The closest thing would be the ending of mass effect 3 and this was the majority of actual fans of the item complaining which is why change was actually achieved. When you're self-admittedly-irrelevant, your views are equally irrelevant.

If you want "feminist core values" or whatever to be mainstay game elements, get a whole bunch of feminists, equal to the number of non-feminists, to actively participate on an equal footing for an equal amount of time that other types of fans have and eventually you'll reach the clout needed to actually affect change after some years pass. Whining online about it and asking for the easy way to change is only gonna piss people off.

 

[endtherapture]

Zachary Amaranth is talking about this sort of attitude: "Your requests are not reasonable, because you aren't customers, posting as customers that you feel more character diversity is in order. You are non customers, claiming you will continue to be non customers, until diversity is met."

Obviously, you've not displayed this argument yourself, at least I've not seen it from you, but it's a common enough one.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, right? No matter what side of the coin you're on, too.

The only action that for-profit corporations will see is the non-buying of their product. That's just how it is. GTA games for example have shown a long history of resent towards women dating back to at least the early 00s. With that history you could easily decide to boycott a game. That's how companies see it in a capitalist society. If you really want, you could buy a second-hand copy. Not buying the game and then mailing the publisher to know your thoughts is also a valid option. However you can't buy a full price copy of the game, with profits going to the publisher and developers, and then complain that the game is sexist, when you knew from past history of the series it would be sexist. That is called "having your cake and eating it".

Also to Zachary, spend 10 seconds googline "GTAV feminist review" and got this.
http://feministborgia.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/grand-theft-auto-v-a-feminists-review/
Now you can find easily if a game is sexist with a simple google search

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I don't think feminists not buying GTA will actually achieve anything since as far as marketers go they already don't buy it so there's no lost sale when they're not expecting to sell the game to them anyways. I think the best way to achieve change is to simply become part of the community and work with the community towards a cohesive goal rather than try to overthrow the status-quot and establish a new world order.

It's kinda like what happened with comic book movies. Back in the day a movie about comic book characters would be a joke but now they're the biggest blockbusters. They did it through perseverance and through trying hard to keep being there until eventually everyone was used to them and deigned to give them a more open-minded look and accept them. They didn't try to force things and decry opposing views as sexist or hateful.

 

[JimB]

Of course I don't have time to analyze all 200 games in my Steam library.

You have time to play them, but not to think about them? How does that work?

Maybe if you helped out and subjected your installed games on Steam to a similar study then it would be a lot more constructive?

I do not believe that will help, because this is exactly what Anita Sarkeesian does, and the people who are determined to disagree with her just dismiss her arguments and observations as wrong despite her having put a significant amount of work into explaining and supporting her positions.

 

[endtherapture]

Of course I don't have time to analyze all 200 games in my Steam library.

You have time to play them, but not to think about them? How does that work?

Maybe if you helped out and subjected your installed games on Steam to a similar study then it would be a lot more constructive?

I do not believe that will help, because this is exactly what Anita Sarkeesian does, and the people who are determined to disagree with her just dismiss her arguments and observations as wrong despite her having put a significant amount of work into explaining and supporting her positions.

I don't have time to play them...I've played about 74 of them and just showed you guys the 26 I had installed...it was just for a bit of a discussion, why are you being so unreasonable like I'm writing a book on it?

Lots of people disagere with Sarkeesian, maybe you should be a big person and be one of those people who don't

 

[JimB]

It was just for a bit of a discussion; why are you being so unreasonable like I'm writing a book on it?

You are the one who decided to print on a public forum your personal beliefs for the purpose of attempting to convince people of something. I am a part of that public you exposed your beliefs to, and I find them unconvincing because I think they are proof of nothing but your own preconceptions. I might as well ask you why you're being so unreasonable like the discussion is only allowed to be what you want it to be.

Lots of people disagree with Sarkeesian; maybe you should be a big person and be one of those people who don't.

I agree with some of the things she says, and disagree with others. What on Earth does agreeing with her have to do with being a big person? What are you even talking about?