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[Neonivek]

A common trope in romance novel is a man giving up his dreams and ambitions for sake of being with a woman, and this being presented as a transition from childishness to maturity. And that's pretty damn offensive, if you ask me.

Ohh you see that is because the Woman is the one who fulfilled her dreams.

Remember that old offensive trope where women in movies would only be fulfilled after they had sex with a man? It is basically the gender swap of that.

Heck I've seen a really terrible movie that did a gender swapped parody of the "Give up everything to be a father/husband" and honestly it hit all the key points. Since she was actually in an important and self-fulfilling job that she loved and was great at until she just gave it up on the spot (She was the president and was about to foster world peace forever)

Who really *honestly* cares about that though? Must we know strive to eliminate all that is deemed 'offensive' by any one persons?

I do, mostly because it is really terrible hack writing that has further societal implications as it is propagated.

Who cares about women being sexualized in videogames? Certainly not the majority of the people who play Dead or Alive Volleyball. (I am being facetious)

[Loud Whispers]

Then the second question is why anyone cares. *Implications* of offensiveness just don't stand up to free media, plus you're all oversimplifying these things into categories which are irrelevant.

[Neonivek]

Then the second question is why anyone cares. *Implications* of offensiveness just don't stand up to free media, plus you're all oversimplifying these things into categories which are irrelevant.

To me, the reason this is important to me... is because it improves storytelling.

The "offensive" tropes on both the male and female side has such cripplingly dumb effects on just storytelling and game design in general.

When Sophitia Syndrome is a thing... there is a problem.

So I bring up how dumb it is, how offensive it is, and how we should be striving for better.

In other words it is just trash.

[Bauglir]

Look if one of the major supporting arguments doesn't hold up, why would the rest be any better? The video is aggravating and annoying as it is.

But fine.

Because it's essentially an essay, and a good essay builds on several supporting arguments to lead to a conclusion, interweaving ideas in such a way that they build on one another. Chopping off any essay 2 paragraphs in will result in a terrible one, regardless of its original quality (and not all good essays actually start with their thesis, like they teach in class). For that matter, the argument holds up - it isn't that men aren't objectified because men are running the business, it's that men aren't likely to be objectified because the industry specifically designs games for men and ignores women. As a supporting argument, it obviously isn't enough to carry the day on its own, and it doesn't have to be.

And because if you're unwilling to experience something, you don't get to have a worthwhile opinion on it. You've proven you already don't care enough to form one.

You didn't even have any in-thread discussion to base your ideas on and reference. You had your own prejudices and assumptions. I'm going to get a little personal here, but this is an ongoing trend with you. If you can't make the effort to even hear somebody else's ideas, how can you expect anybody to care about yours?

[Loud Whispers]

Then the second question is why anyone cares. *Implications* of offensiveness just don't stand up to free media, plus you're all oversimplifying these things into categories which are irrelevant.

To me, the reason this is important to me... is because it improves storytelling.

The "offensive" tropes on both the male and female side has such cripplingly dumb effects on just storytelling and game design in general.

When Sophitia Syndrome is a thing... there is a problem.

Let the writing stand to the test based on its own substance, not 'tropes.' The presence of a trope does not render a story magically crap. Imagine at the end of an Epic you hear an overdone cliche, and the protagonist has actually been fighting his father all along. Would that suddenly undo every other merit it has?

Seriously, review your analyses guys.

[Max White]

A common trope in romance novel is a man giving up his dreams and ambitions for sake of being with a woman, and this being presented as a transition from childishness to maturity. And that's pretty damn offensive, if you ask me.

Who really *honestly* cares about that though? Must we know strive to eliminate all that is deemed 'offensive' by any one persons?

Well, I honestly do not. So men are all broad chested, long haired super men who act irresponsibly but because it is a novel instead of people acting realistically they pretend it is romantic? I don't care. There are other books out there that I enjoy a lot more.

If the only books you could ever get were romance novels, I would be annoyed, but not because these books exist, but rather because I'm not getting access to something I enjoy.
So the problem with games isn't over sexulized characters, and pointing to a womans skirt and saying "It has no reason to be that short! Objectification!" is bullshit, because the reason is that some people enjoy it. The problem is how hard it is to find something for other audiences.

[Neonivek]

you don't get to have a worthwhile opinion on it

I think the weight of my opinion on what little I saw... Will change infinitesimally if I saw the whole thing.

You didn't even have any in-thread discussion to base your ideas on and reference. You had your own prejudices and assumptions. I'm going to get a little personal here, but this is an ongoing trend with you. If you can't make the effort to even hear somebody else's ideas, how can you expect anybody to care about yours?

It is because I am often so frustrated with these topics and these tropes that should be a "no duh" situation that I don't bother then giving a very general opinion.

You had your own prejudices and assumptions

Yep, but a Prejudice isn't necessarily a bad thing. I use my prejudices and assumptions to wade through crud without getting depressed that I had to listen to a lot of crud.

Imagine at the end of an Epic you hear an overdone cliche

No, my complain is that they are dumb, always were dumb, and they are used in a way that lacks any thought or intelligence.

While indeed I could imagine someone could subvert it and use it intelligently, this isn't being used in that way and their widespread propagation only means that it is far far more noticeable.

[Loud Whispers]

Let the romantics reduce people to irresponsible objects of desire or even just dehumanized sex-objects. There is always media otherwise for those who wish, and always the opportunities to make media otherwise. And if you're worried about realism - it's humanity, and humanity's a large species. No matter how idiotic or irresponsible you make a character and try to pass off as average Joe McJoe, they probably exist.

No, my complain is that they are dumb, always were dumb, and they are used in a way that lacks any thought or intelligence.

While indeed I could imagine someone could subvert it and use it intelligently, this isn't being used in that way and their widespread propagation only means that it is far far more noticeable.

Though they may be dumb, there is nothing inherently dumb about them.

[Neonivek]

Though they may be dumb, there is nothing inherently dumb about them

Using them in the dumb way IS the cliché.

[Loud Whispers]

Though they may be dumb, there is nothing inherently dumb about them

Using them in the dumb way IS the cliché.

Well then that's rather dumb.

[DJ]

So the problem with games isn't over sexulized characters, and pointing to a womans skirt and saying "It has no reason to be that short! Objectification!" is bullshit, because the reason is that some people enjoy it. The problem is how hard it is to find something for other audiences.

Is it, though? That looks just like heavy selection bias to me. Vast majority of games I play are gender neutral, though that's my own selection bias because I stay away from story centered games (plot and interactivity are fundamentally opposed forces, and I like interactivity in my games). To be a little more concrete, here's the games I'm playing currently: Planetside 2, Salem, Stone Soup Dungeon Crawl, Team Fortress 2, Battle for Wesnoth. Sure, you could accuse TF2 of gender bias (though not objectification of women, the announcer is definitely not overly sexualized), but you first ought to sort out the much bigger political correctness issue it has - rampant negative ethnic stereotyping.

[EnigmaticHat]

You know Loud Whispers, you post everywhere and I lurk everywhere and I generally find your posts to be entertaining or insightful.  But in this one thread the way you're arguing is bothering me.

First of all, you used romance covers as an example.  That still bothers me.  First of all, again, its smut.  But not even that.  Women are more objectified (and typically written worse) than men, not just in media at large*, but in books, already a negligible share of the entertainment industry.  You took the one portion of an already small medium in which the normal objectification is reversed, and used that to argue that women and men are objectified equally.  Its a dishonest debating strategy because it picks an exception and an extreme and presents it as the norm.

Who really *honestly* cares about that though? Must we know strive to eliminate all that is deemed 'offensive' by any one persons?

This is literally just dismissing the people who make the argument without acknowledging the argument.  People aren't saying "change video games because I don't like them."  They're saying "change video games because they have problems".

As to who cares: feminists, female gamers, all the people who sent death and rape threats to Anita.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Let the romantics reduce people to irresponsible objects of desire or even just dehumanized sex-objects. There is always media otherwise for those who wish, and always the opportunities to make media otherwise. And if you're worried about realism - it's humanity, and humanity's a large species. No matter how idiotic or irresponsible you make a character and try to pass off as average Joe McJoe, they probably exist.

"There is always media otherwise for those who wish"
No, there isn't.  Women are given shitty treatment and shoehorned into crappy archetypes in the majority of media.  Media of all genres defaults to male focused fanservice, female characters of all roles default to the object of male desire.  This is what's at stake here.  Most female characters everywhere are handled badly, offensively, or in a way that is otherwise off-putting to a female audience.  The reasons could be financial, they could be because the creators of media tend to be men.  It could just be that people are stupid.  That doesn't change the fact that these are solvable problems that need to be fixed.

*with the possible exception of Japanese visual media, which has a lot of male fanservice.  But that's less handling fanservice well and more taking normal still flawed fanservice tropes and supercharging them.  Because, you know, Japan.

[Neonivek]

As to who cares: feminists, female gamers, all the people who sent death and rape threats to Anita

Hey! I am none of those things and I CARE!

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

First of all, you used romance covers as an example.  That still bothers me.  First of all, again, its smut.  But not even that.  Women are more objectified (and typically written worse) than men, not just in media at large*, but in books, already a negligible share of the entertainment industry.  You took the one portion of an already small medium in which the normal objectification is reversed, and used that to argue that women and men are objectified equally.  Its a dishonest debating strategy because it picks an exception and an extreme and presents it as the norm.

Well if I were to have done my post proper it would have been to say that female and male standards of beauty and attraction are on the same level; that everyone is saying characterization is not only not for the character's sake but instead for a sex's sake, irregardless of both genders idealizing the same things for both genders.

This is literally just dismissing the people who make the argument without acknowledging the argument.  People aren't saying "change video games because I don't like them."  They're saying "change video games because they have problems".

Well if it's because I'm dismissing them, it's because I'm dismissing them and haven't been convinced at all it's a problem.

As to who cares: feminists, female gamers, all the people who sent death and rape threats to Anita.

In my inbox I got one guy talking about Yoda, one guy calling me an asshole, one guy calling me gay, one guy calling me a muslim infidel, one guy calling me a criminal, three guys giving me death threats but alas, no rape threats. I usually have to check my mail for those. That's today.
Trolls don't really represent anyone.

"There is always media otherwise for those who wish"
No, there isn't.

'-and always the opportunities to make media otherwise.'

  Women are given shitty treatment and shoehorned into crappy archetypes in the majority of media.

No, characters are.

  Media of all genres defaults to male focused fanservice, female characters of all roles default to the object of male desire.

To ignore that the overwhelming majority of our species is attracted to the opposite sex is to ignore the meaning of life.

  This is what's at stake here.  Most female characters everywhere are handled badly, offensively, or in a way that is otherwise off-putting to a female audience.  The reasons could be financial, they could be because the creators of media tend to be men.

No, it's because the executives in charge of the design teams are often the people who honestly don't care about games or stories. But no, of course, men did it. Men stand at the apex. Everyone aim for their shins.

That doesn't change the fact that these are solvable problems that need to be fixed.

I've not actually seen problems brought up by Anita that were problems of sexism.

You know Loud Whispers, you post everywhere and I lurk everywhere and I generally find your posts to be entertaining or insightful.  But in this one thread the way you're arguing is bothering me.

Maybe because as of right now I'm not arguing, not in the strictest sense. Though I do try my best.

[Inarius]

Seing women designed as sex objects in (most) video games is just an annoyance. The real issue is elsewhere, when some immature and dumb players will think that WE are the same than in his games.

But , then, the main problem is not the game. It's the people.
My little brother was very often asking me why I was not like XXX or YYY or why I didn't dress like ZZZ, but he was still "young" and it was as much about TV than games. Being stupid at 13 is not a crime, and "video games" is only another bringer of culture.

Some people are able to take some distance, some aren't. For those who aren't, the fact that games are sexists is not the only problem. We should shut down everything else (movies, TV, MTV, youtube, etc.) to make them better.

It's true that "normal" women are hardly even existing in video games. But, well...how many female graphic developers exist in the video game industry ? I don't think they are to blame. Imagine -as a male- living a 95% male team, often young, sometimes frustrated (because during their IT studies, there were only 3 women in their class). I am over simplifying, but it's partially true.
The problem has to be treated much ahead, in schools. The day when 50% of the devs will be female will see a great improvement in the image of women in videogames.