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Please don't go calling people racist, misogynists, or any combination therein. Don't start throwing around words like "white Knight" or SJW, these words are at this point used in a derogatory manner regarding this debate. You can discuss that these terms exist, but do not attribute them to any individual user or group of users on this website.
Try to have a serious discussion about the topic at hand without resorting to personal attacks and we will all be the better for it. Breaking this rule will result in an automatic temp ban the length of which will depend on the comment you make.
This thread started not so bad. It is getting worse. If you want to have this discussion on TL be respectful of your fellow users, we all live in the same house.
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On October 18 2014 11:40 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:08 WolfintheSheep wrote:
And when you think about it, if there really is a boom in female consumers for the "hardcore" gaming market, do you really think the end result will be a decrease in fanservice for men? Personally, I think we'd see the exact opposite, with a very sharp increase in fanservice for women. I think you see a sharp increase in fan service to women, which will fail, because most women hate being pandered to. That's really not what women gamers want either. And then some developer that actually knows what they're doing will make the equivalent of The Dark Knight Rises, which will appeal to everyone, and has female characters — both good, bad and gasp! sexy — with some actual personality. This game will win awards and a bazillion dollars, and everyone will be wondering what the fuss was about.
The same can be said for all forms of fan service, though. A game is a game, and it still needs to be good. Fan service alone doesn't sell copies. But you can you really say that the appearance of males in series like Final Fantasy don't help to push the female fandom?
Saying that women don't want to be pandered to is basically ignoring entire sections of the internet devoted to slash fanfics and yaoi porn.
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On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes.
Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men want or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women want
I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest.
@Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model.
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On October 18 2014 11:47 Dunnobro wrote:
Supply and demand is not lazy. You can't present the argument that the market PRODUCED the demographic with no proof. There are many studies specifically on gaming which prove women aren't as interested in games. And then biological studies which support theories as to why. (male brains are more competitive, single-minded, etc)
The market was always this way, looooong before we could even really sexualize games. Your egg-chicken theory also ignores that there is an entire industry dedicated to investigating demographics and not to target to them. Guess how they determine the best way to target women? Phone games.
Race and religion have no such studies or wild differences in biology between them.
I never said that the market produced the demographic, so I'm not sure where you got that from. The market just reflects what is the existing purchasing preference in society at a given time. So it's just descriptive since it just well, describes what is happening. It does not offer reasons, nor is it really interested in reasons. That's why it is a lazy argument, it essentially boils down to "well things are this way, it is very difficult to change them, so why bother".
Like let's take everything you say as being true. The question remains - why should we keep portraying women in the way they are being portrayed in gaming now?
The analogy to racism is to show how the argument falls apart. If the market favours the production of racist material, then it just shows that people like to see racist movies. It does not address the more important question of whether racism is a desireable thing to have in our societ.
Edit: and yes, the industry is changing to have less sexual objectification of women, and that's great. But just because some improvement has been made does not mean this conversation becomes redundant. I thought the newest tomb raider was pretty awesome, and it was a nice example of having a strong, motivated woman as the main character who was also attractive to men. And from tomb raider too! The character that used to be one of the worst examples of "guns and boobs".
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So I've tried to just read everything without making any comments on this whole situation but I had a thought (or i guess it's more of a question). One big argument is that having a woman character as a "damsel in distress" objectifies women as sexual objects. I see this argument used over and over. What i don't see ever mentioned is the many many many games where you are constantly killing male "background" characters. Does this not objectify men as objects to kill?
Maybe I'm just confused but isn't that as equally bad (if not worse) ?
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On October 18 2014 11:54 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:47 Dunnobro wrote:
Supply and demand is not lazy. You can't present the argument that the market PRODUCED the demographic with no proof. There are many studies specifically on gaming which prove women aren't as interested in games. And then biological studies which support theories as to why. (male brains are more competitive, single-minded, etc)
The market was always this way, looooong before we could even really sexualize games. Your egg-chicken theory also ignores that there is an entire industry dedicated to investigating demographics and not to target to them. Guess how they determine the best way to target women? Phone games.
Race and religion have no such studies or wild differences in biology between them.
I never said that the market produced the demographic, so I'm not sure where you got that from. The market just reflects what is the existing purchasing preference in society at a given time. So it's just descriptive since it just well, describes what is happening. It does not offer reasons, nor is it really interested in reasons. That's why it is a lazy argument, it essentially boils down to "well things are this way, it is very difficult to change them, so why bother". Like let's take everything you say as being true. The question remains - why should we keep portraying women in the way they are being portrayed in gaming now? The analogy to racism is to show how the argument falls apart. If the market favours the production of racist material, then it just shows that people like to see racist movies. It does not address the more important question of whether racism is a desireable thing to have in our societ.
...People do like seeing racist movies though lol.
White girls, Borat, White castle, etc.
So does that mean problematic views in media might actually not effect or reflect problems in our society?
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On October 18 2014 11:58 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
So I've tried to just read everything without making any comments on this whole situation but I had a thought (or i guess it's more of a question). One big argument is that having a woman character as a "damsel in distress" objectifies women as sexual objects. I see this argument used over and over. What i don't see ever mentioned is the many many many games where you are constantly killing male "background" characters. Does this not objectify men as objects to kill?
Maybe I'm just confused but isn't that as equally bad (if not worse) ?
Yes, this is referred to as "disposable male" trope.
Edit: Though I'm not saying it's worse.
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On October 18 2014 11:52 Dunnobro wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes. Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men what or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women what. I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest. @Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model.
Fair enough. My bad. I was just imagining a game strictly in the triple-A realm, which would be so expensive it would have to appeal to men and women.
But can I imagine 50 Shade of Grey — Erotic Sexy Text adventure? Yes. Actually someone should get on that.
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On October 18 2014 11:48 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:42 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 11:28 levelping wrote:
Sexism should be done away with and I totally would like for lots of unnecessary sexist stuff to be removed from a medium which I love.
I dont get the points that market should be geared at the largest demographic, or that since no girls play games it's okay to cater to male fantasy trips. Why do we need girls to be present to clear up sexism? Shouldn't we clean up the house since sexism is generally bad whether or not girls are here?
And also so what if movies or the rest other world has sexism issues too. As gamers we can look at the one area we can make better. How do you propose not gearing any industry towards the largest demographic? Young males buy the most videogames, ergo there is the most incentive for developers to design games with their preferences in mind. And I'm not saying I'm happy with the current target demographic for videogames. I love serious, realistic, difficult games, and those are simply few and far between now. Call of Duty sold so well because it targeted the biggest demographic, which is people with short attention spans. I don't like the series, but I don't hold it against them or try to change it. I accept that I am not the target demographic. I think the point of the discussion now is to make young males a little more aware of how women and portrayed in games, and hopefully change the views of the largest demographic. Or alternatively, to convince big studios to take a risk and stop pandering to its existing audience, but instead try and expand the market by being more inclusive.
I don't want to expand the market. The last time the market expanded, i.e. with Call of Duty, every dev out there tried to cater to the CoD audience, and many franchises I loved got dumbed down to fall in with the low attention span style of play CoD players want. I miss when all games were hard.
On October 18 2014 12:08 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:52 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes. Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men what or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women what. I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest. @Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model. Fair enough. My bad. I was just imagining a game strictly in the triple-A realm, which would be so expensive it would have to appeal to men and women. But can I imagine 50 Shade of Grey — Erotic Sexy Text adventure? Yes. Actually someone should get on that.
This brings up another big problem. I can't imagine what gameplay a game targeted at female demographics would have. I can't imagine it being much more than a visual novel, which isn't much more than a book. It'd be ridiculous to call the VN version of Twilight a videogame. There'd be no actual gameplay in it whatsoever.
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On October 18 2014 11:59 Dunnobro wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:54 levelping wrote:On October 18 2014 11:47 Dunnobro wrote:
Supply and demand is not lazy. You can't present the argument that the market PRODUCED the demographic with no proof. There are many studies specifically on gaming which prove women aren't as interested in games. And then biological studies which support theories as to why. (male brains are more competitive, single-minded, etc)
The market was always this way, looooong before we could even really sexualize games. Your egg-chicken theory also ignores that there is an entire industry dedicated to investigating demographics and not to target to them. Guess how they determine the best way to target women? Phone games.
Race and religion have no such studies or wild differences in biology between them.
I never said that the market produced the demographic, so I'm not sure where you got that from. The market just reflects what is the existing purchasing preference in society at a given time. So it's just descriptive since it just well, describes what is happening. It does not offer reasons, nor is it really interested in reasons. That's why it is a lazy argument, it essentially boils down to "well things are this way, it is very difficult to change them, so why bother". Like let's take everything you say as being true. The question remains - why should we keep portraying women in the way they are being portrayed in gaming now? The analogy to racism is to show how the argument falls apart. If the market favours the production of racist material, then it just shows that people like to see racist movies. It does not address the more important question of whether racism is a desireable thing to have in our societ. ...People do like seeing racist movies though lol. White girls, Borat, White castle, etc. So does that mean problematic views in media might actually not effect or reflect problems in our society?
Well there's racism and then there's racist movies. Like for example we can both agree that there's a big difference between White Girls and The Triumph of the Will. Racist movies like white castle etc are actually great because it shows a maturity of the medium to deal with issues of race in an irreverent way. And it's also fairly clear that the way race is being handled in those movies are in the context of a comedy, and so that's a space for people to just laugh at how silly race can be.
I mentioned Metal Gear Solid a few posts back as being the gaming equivalent of this in terms of gender roles, since it objectifies both genders, is fully aware of what it is doing, and does not take itself seriously. MGS is great and my quarrel is not with MGS. It is to games where women serve no other purpose than to show some skin, and this isn't being presend in a funny or ironic way.
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On October 18 2014 12:08 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:59 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:54 levelping wrote:On October 18 2014 11:47 Dunnobro wrote:
Supply and demand is not lazy. You can't present the argument that the market PRODUCED the demographic with no proof. There are many studies specifically on gaming which prove women aren't as interested in games. And then biological studies which support theories as to why. (male brains are more competitive, single-minded, etc)
The market was always this way, looooong before we could even really sexualize games. Your egg-chicken theory also ignores that there is an entire industry dedicated to investigating demographics and not to target to them. Guess how they determine the best way to target women? Phone games.
Race and religion have no such studies or wild differences in biology between them.
I never said that the market produced the demographic, so I'm not sure where you got that from. The market just reflects what is the existing purchasing preference in society at a given time. So it's just descriptive since it just well, describes what is happening. It does not offer reasons, nor is it really interested in reasons. That's why it is a lazy argument, it essentially boils down to "well things are this way, it is very difficult to change them, so why bother". Like let's take everything you say as being true. The question remains - why should we keep portraying women in the way they are being portrayed in gaming now? The analogy to racism is to show how the argument falls apart. If the market favours the production of racist material, then it just shows that people like to see racist movies. It does not address the more important question of whether racism is a desireable thing to have in our societ. ...People do like seeing racist movies though lol. White girls, Borat, White castle, etc. So does that mean problematic views in media might actually not effect or reflect problems in our society? Well there's racism and then there's racist movies. Like for example we can both agree that there's a big difference between White Girls and The Triumph of the Will. Racist movies like white castle etc are actually great because it shows a maturity of the medium to deal with issues of race in an irreverent way. And it's also fairly clear that the way race is being handled in those movies are in the context of a comedy, and so that's a space for people to just laugh at how silly race can be. I mentioned Metal Gear Solid a few posts back as being the gaming equivalent of this in terms of gender roles, since it objectifies both genders, is fully aware of what it is doing, and does not take itself seriously. MGS is great and my quarrel is not with MGS. It is to games where women serve no other purpose than to show some skin, and this isn't being presend in a funny or ironic way.
They're still racist though. The point I'm trying to make is that yea, the way those movies are racist isn't bad. But then shouldn't there be ways to be sexist that isn't bad?
Edit: OH you totally explained that. Yea, but personally i think pointless character additions are bad regardless of sexism. Which is why i feel we should be more focused on pointing out poor decisions than sexist decisions. If they're sexist too, yea cool. But let's not make it about that.
This leads to people going into why a character is being objectified, and leaves it at that. Objectification is synonymous with bad, and for the most part it is as far as culture goes. But sometimes the character itself isn't really objectified and if they had to objectively explain why the character was bad they couldn't do this.
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On October 18 2014 12:08 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:52 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes. Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men what or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women what. I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest. @Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model. Fair enough. My bad. I was just imagining a game strictly in the triple-A realm, which would be so expensive it would have to appeal to men and women. But can I imagine 50 Shade of Grey — Erotic Sexy Text adventure? Yes. Actually someone should get on that.
Well, have you seen the trailers for Final Fantasy 15? Purely male playable cast, all fitting the Japanese "Bishie" archetype (basically good-looking pretty boys).
Maybe I wouldn't call it pandering, but I'd definitely consider it fanservice for females, done on a multimillion budget by a AAA developer.
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On October 18 2014 11:58 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
So I've tried to just read everything without making any comments on this whole situation but I had a thought (or i guess it's more of a question). One big argument is that having a woman character as a "damsel in distress" objectifies women as sexual objects. I see this argument used over and over. What i don't see ever mentioned is the many many many games where you are constantly killing male "background" characters. Does this not objectify men as objects to kill?
Maybe I'm just confused but isn't that as equally bad (if not worse) ?
Sarkeesian does address this. While there are killable male NPCs in games, they're not sexualized and they're not the only representation of male characters in the game. The game might be supported with male heroes, side characters with different roles and social statuses, etc. It's when the only female characters in a game are simply damsels, sex objects, or shrews that you start to think hey ... maybe this is getting overboard.
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On October 18 2014 12:13 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 12:08 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:52 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes. Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men what or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women what. I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest. @Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model. Fair enough. My bad. I was just imagining a game strictly in the triple-A realm, which would be so expensive it would have to appeal to men and women. But can I imagine 50 Shade of Grey — Erotic Sexy Text adventure? Yes. Actually someone should get on that. Well, have you seen the trailers for Final Fantasy 15? Purely male playable cast, all fitting the Japanese "Bishie" archetype (basically good-looking pretty boys). Maybe I wouldn't call it pandering, but I'd definitely consider it fanservice for females, done on a multimillion budget by a AAA developer.
Aren't most JRPG males rather Bishie? Or is this more pronounced?
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On October 18 2014 12:10 Dunnobro wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 12:08 levelping wrote:On October 18 2014 11:59 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:54 levelping wrote:On October 18 2014 11:47 Dunnobro wrote:
Supply and demand is not lazy. You can't present the argument that the market PRODUCED the demographic with no proof. There are many studies specifically on gaming which prove women aren't as interested in games. And then biological studies which support theories as to why. (male brains are more competitive, single-minded, etc)
The market was always this way, looooong before we could even really sexualize games. Your egg-chicken theory also ignores that there is an entire industry dedicated to investigating demographics and not to target to them. Guess how they determine the best way to target women? Phone games.
Race and religion have no such studies or wild differences in biology between them.
I never said that the market produced the demographic, so I'm not sure where you got that from. The market just reflects what is the existing purchasing preference in society at a given time. So it's just descriptive since it just well, describes what is happening. It does not offer reasons, nor is it really interested in reasons. That's why it is a lazy argument, it essentially boils down to "well things are this way, it is very difficult to change them, so why bother". Like let's take everything you say as being true. The question remains - why should we keep portraying women in the way they are being portrayed in gaming now? The analogy to racism is to show how the argument falls apart. If the market favours the production of racist material, then it just shows that people like to see racist movies. It does not address the more important question of whether racism is a desireable thing to have in our societ. ...People do like seeing racist movies though lol. White girls, Borat, White castle, etc. So does that mean problematic views in media might actually not effect or reflect problems in our society? Well there's racism and then there's racist movies. Like for example we can both agree that there's a big difference between White Girls and The Triumph of the Will. Racist movies like white castle etc are actually great because it shows a maturity of the medium to deal with issues of race in an irreverent way. And it's also fairly clear that the way race is being handled in those movies are in the context of a comedy, and so that's a space for people to just laugh at how silly race can be. I mentioned Metal Gear Solid a few posts back as being the gaming equivalent of this in terms of gender roles, since it objectifies both genders, is fully aware of what it is doing, and does not take itself seriously. MGS is great and my quarrel is not with MGS. It is to games where women serve no other purpose than to show some skin, and this isn't being presend in a funny or ironic way. They're still racist though. The point I'm trying to make is that yea, the way those movies are racist isn't bad. But then shouldn't there be ways to be sexist that isn't bad?
I don't think that you can call them racist since they make fun of the idea of being racist in the first place. Sure they feature racism as an issue or a theme, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call the movie racist.
I don't want to get caught up in a definitional argument though - I think it is common ground between us that there are ways of presenting sexist issues which are not sexist, and there are ways which are sexist. And really I'm pointing to the second area as what we should change.
As for your second point, I 've already mentioned MGS (twice) as a good way of how a game has made light of sexist tropes in the industry, and how I have no problems with that.
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On October 18 2014 12:13 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 12:08 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:52 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes. Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men what or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women what. I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest. @Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model. Fair enough. My bad. I was just imagining a game strictly in the triple-A realm, which would be so expensive it would have to appeal to men and women. But can I imagine 50 Shade of Grey — Erotic Sexy Text adventure? Yes. Actually someone should get on that. Well, have you seen the trailers for Final Fantasy 15? Purely male playable cast, all fitting the Japanese "Bishie" archetype (basically good-looking pretty boys). Maybe I wouldn't call it pandering, but I'd definitely consider it fanservice for females, done on a multimillion budget by a AAA developer.
That's interesting. Do you think there are significant cultural difference been the Japanese and Western game cultures? There seems to be way more diversity in the Japan with the medium, similar to their views of manga and animation. Or am I stereotyping?
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On October 18 2014 12:15 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 11:58 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
So I've tried to just read everything without making any comments on this whole situation but I had a thought (or i guess it's more of a question). One big argument is that having a woman character as a "damsel in distress" objectifies women as sexual objects. I see this argument used over and over. What i don't see ever mentioned is the many many many games where you are constantly killing male "background" characters. Does this not objectify men as objects to kill?
Maybe I'm just confused but isn't that as equally bad (if not worse) ? Sarkeesian does address this. While there are killable male NPCs in games, they're not sexualized and they're not the only representation of male characters in the game. The game might be supported with male heroes, side characters with different roles and social statuses, etc. It's when the only female characters in a game are simply damsels, sex objects, or shrews that you start to think hey ... maybe this is getting overboard.
Games like mirror's edge and switch force only have male enemies/unimportants though. I'm sure there are others too.
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Oh wow mercedes pulled advertising from all gawker sites: https://i.imgur.com/gLoJFYw.png
Bully was forced to apologize in response to this, but now it comes out the editor in chief who gave him a raise subtly called a concerned parent autistic in an email about it, so i doubt they're out of the water.
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On October 18 2014 12:16 Dunnobro wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 12:13 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 12:08 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:52 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes. Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men what or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women what. I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest. @Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model. Fair enough. My bad. I was just imagining a game strictly in the triple-A realm, which would be so expensive it would have to appeal to men and women. But can I imagine 50 Shade of Grey — Erotic Sexy Text adventure? Yes. Actually someone should get on that. Well, have you seen the trailers for Final Fantasy 15? Purely male playable cast, all fitting the Japanese "Bishie" archetype (basically good-looking pretty boys). Maybe I wouldn't call it pandering, but I'd definitely consider it fanservice for females, done on a multimillion budget by a AAA developer. Aren't most JRPG males rather Bishie? Or is this more pronounced?
Not really. Just look at Wakka, Balthier, Snow or Sazh in the last few Final Fantasies.
Then again, I might have been exaggerating a bit, but I just remembered it being fairly notable in the trailer.
On October 18 2014 12:18 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2014 12:13 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 12:08 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:52 Dunnobro wrote:On October 18 2014 11:50 Defacer wrote:On October 18 2014 11:25 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 18 2014 11:21 Millitron wrote:On October 18 2014 10:28 levelping wrote:
I don't get why it's so hard to accept that gaming might have some sexism in it. I mean come on guys it's an industry built largely for teenage boys. There boob armour and gratitutious fan service everywhere. We all obviously love gaming. So recognising one of the limiting aspects of the genre isn't a bad thing. It's so we can improve. And we didint need gamer gate to tell us this. The issue is that the people clamoring for change aren't the ones who actually play videogames. And I mean real videogames, not solitaire or candy crush, please don't bring up that "study" that says 50% of gamers are female. Games are mostly made for young males, because they're the ones who will pay $60 for a new game. Young males like violence, sexy females, and being the classical hero. Saving the damsel in distress is a common trope in all media aimed at young males, and isn't really seen as a problem. But other media has works that target other demographics. Movies have romcoms, literature has romance novels, music has pop lovesongs. The thing is though, none of those other genres translate really into a videogame. Maybe a visual novel, but even calling those videogames is stretching it. I don't get why there's no huge shitstorm over action movies being targeted at young males, but there is a shitstorm over videogames being target at young males. Why can't the people upset with sexism just accept they are not the target audience of this or that videogame? Speaking of action movies...notice how Sony pulled in the female audience for X-Men? Did they do away with the skintight outfits on women, and get Mystique to dress more conservatively? Nope. Skintight suits for all, latex bodysuit for Rebecca Romijin, but most importantly Hugh Jackman with at least 5 shirtless scenes every movie. Exactly. I don't think women want asexual characters or 'SJW — the Game.' They just want games where female characters have actually agency and personalities. When the ONLY representation of a woman in a game is as a sex object, I think it's fair to say, hey, this game is kind of sexist. Or at the very least, pandering to dudes. Personally I'd wish instead of ignoring what men what or insulting them for it, they investigate overlap in what men and women what. I don't think the act of making an empowered, well-rounded female character, and appealing to men are as mutually exclusive as some seem to suggest. @Women don't like being pandered to: Uhh, actually in pretty much every other business women respond most positively to ads targeted towards them. Not sure where you're getting that idea. I believe it's just they need to be pandered to in a different way than just switching genders around from the male-advertising model. Fair enough. My bad. I was just imagining a game strictly in the triple-A realm, which would be so expensive it would have to appeal to men and women. But can I imagine 50 Shade of Grey — Erotic Sexy Text adventure? Yes. Actually someone should get on that. Well, have you seen the trailers for Final Fantasy 15? Purely male playable cast, all fitting the Japanese "Bishie" archetype (basically good-looking pretty boys). Maybe I wouldn't call it pandering, but I'd definitely consider it fanservice for females, done on a multimillion budget by a AAA developer. That's interesting. Do you think there are significant cultural difference been the Japanese and Western game cultures? There seems to be way more diversity in the Japan with the medium, similar to their views of manga and animation. Or am I stereotyping?
Hard to say, really.
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's more of a difference in aesthetic appeal. Asian culture seems to promote the "pretty-boy" look a lot more than Western culture.
Western culture is a lot bigger on the "ruggedly handsome" appearance.
With that said, Western media probably pushes the ruggedly handsome male protagonists as much as Eastern media pushes the Bishie males. Maybe it's just the cross-examination of culture preferences that makes it seem more obvious.
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Though I am in no way a GGer, I totally don't mind that Mercedez pulled out of Gawker. That guy was stupidly over the line, and the Gawker network was never exactly a good standard for quality content.
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I think the main takeaway I got from this whole thing is that people might not actually realize everyone can read their tweets.
There seems to be a huge untaped market for some common sense social media advising. Maybe make an app that reads peoples comments out loud before they post it, so they have a second chance to realize how stupid they are.
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EPT
