Since this is a discussion on gender, I feel the need to qualify my statements by saying I am a white, heterosexual, cisexual, Christian, American, able-bodied, physically fit, authoritarian-leaning, and all around privileged, male. (Not a WASP unfortunately, so the privilege stops there. But I promise I am working towards wealth and power to increase the privilege.) So if you feel like dismissing my arguments, be my guest.
I can't speak for Mindmaker, but I was unsure if what you said was a parody because you phrased it in a way that was generalizing and unnecessarily rude. It seems like you just said something inflammatory and then used the defensive reaction to it (that ANYONE can and should have) as justification for calling them (and everyone that disagrees with you) entitled babies who can't understand other perspectives.
I even think you make a good point otherwise, but your shitty attitude is not conducive to discussion.
I was generalizing based on experiences here and elsewhere, though if you noticed I even qualified my statement to represent a trend rather than universal. As for the necessity of the "rudeness" we clearly disagree, particularly in that I feel I'm being more blunt than insulting but I suppose that's a subjective understanding. I felt it needed to be said and in a way that would catch peoples' attentions and establish the context for the predictable responses that would follow. Responses that DO come across as incredibly entitled - hence my anger on this issue. You feel that I'm doing this to be closed minded but my challenge is not based on simple disagreement, but rather HOW that disagreement always seems to manifest in these discussions. It hardly even involves some of the discussion that's happening in the thread so far so... yeah my statement hasn't seemed to do anything to stop conversation. You call my outburst a shitty attitude yet ignore that I'm addressing a shitty attitude that pervades these discussions.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/geneticIt does not matter whether someone is the most entitled fucker on the face of the whole damn planet, and shakes it in your face at every opportunity; how someone says something
does not make them less or more valid. People do this all time. I am not necessarily more intelligent on American issues then a European is, and arguments between me and this European must
both be taken at face value until they stand on their own merit. "Attitude" is a cop-out and a way of dismissing your opponent since it is completely subjective.
Feeling's are not facts, and Law is blind. Tell people why they are wrong. You may dislike people personally, and you may choose to call them out, berate them, avoid them, ignore them, or even drop out of the conversation, but that does not make you right.
Put another way: You can feel you're not being rude, and everyone else can feel they're not being entitled, and neither matters to who is actually right.
So, recently, Blizzard's Dustin Browder said some stuff about his company's obligation (or lack thereof) to be progressive in their depiction of women - with phrases like "comic book sensibilities" and "we're not sending a message" being used. With Nintendo also embroiled in controversy over the lack of same-sex relationships in their new Sims-esque social game - and the comment sections following these stories full of unproductive pettiness on all sides, I figured here might be a sort of okay place to get the discussion going. If this should go in the Other Game subforum, apologies - that section looked like it was exclusively for single-game threads.
So, here's what I see as the central questions, and as good a starting point as any:
1. Do private corporations, like Blizzard and Nintendo, have any form of obligation (legal, financial, social, moral, etc.) to avoid the objectification of women and erasure of under-represented groups in their products, even when it is not in their direct monetary interest?
2. Do gamers - especially those who play games with subscription fees - have a responsibility to preferentially patronize game makers that follow the standards in #1?
3. Do you personally feel that an overt effort to be more "inclusive" or "diverse" harms the overall enjoyability of a game - or, alternatively, enhances it?
By no means are these the only questions to be asked on what is a complex, wide-ranging, and divisive issue. Feel free to respond to them, or any others that occurred to you while reading this.
Here are my thoughts, hidden behind a spoiler because WHOAH OPINIONS:
As a gay man, I've got - in my opinion, at least - less of a dog in the women's objectification fight than most: it's not my body type that's being sexualized, nor is it my porn titillating material that's being taken away. I find it vaguely off-putting when an otherwise compelling (or maybe not) female character is basically topless for no justified reason (looking at you, Morrigan), but this is hardly a phenomenon that's confined to video games. Horny straight guys run the world, and so boobs sell. This is a truth I have learned to accept.
What I can't accept is that this entire sexy paradise collapses the moment you introduce a female character that wears clothes and has motivations, or a homosexual character that isn't a jibe at gay men or a fetishization of lesbians - and yet, this is the view that I see most represented in the "too much inclusiveness is bad" camp. My understanding of this position is that video games are perceived by some as a place where the crass and the juvenile is accepted - to an extent, they are - and that scantily-clad babes and no gays are an integral part of this. Thus, under this model, to make video games "grow up" and incorporate a more adult understanding of gender relations would be like ordering steak au poivre at McDonalds' - if you wanted something that fancy, you should have read a novel/gone to a french bistro.
But obviously, that's not the case; not all video games are World of Warcraft and Tomodachi Life. The go-to counterexample, Bioware, has strived to both create complex storylines and write a diverse cast (both to varying degrees of success), and faced a fairly strong internet backlash for it, which suggests to me that people aren't just reacting to the "political correction" of their more basal pleasures, but are instead repulsed by the very notion that the simplicity of the gaming experience - immersion into a different world, disconnection from your own - could be complicated by the inclusion of a nuanced conception of who likes to bang who and why. Or maybe I'm just ridiculously projecting my own insecurities.
I think - and I'm putting on my flame goggles here - that a great deal of this cringing away from diversity has to do with the fact that the dominant group that is now being challenged, heterosexual, predominantly white men, has not, as a group, experienced exclusion to any significant degree. Thus, when different groups clamour for representation, they lack the context to view that as a simple request to be allowed to play with all of the other reindeer - and not as a political statement.
So, let's get the frothing rage going.
1. No. They may choose to do so if they so wish. I'd prefer if they did mind, but I can't force it from up on high. Laws may protect your physical body and property, but the realm of thought and speech is muddled ground. If they, like CVS pharmacy recently did with their decision to stop offering cigarettes, choose to make a moral decision, they can. They are under no obligations but their own collective conscience and the law. I may not like them for it mind; hell I may hate them for what they choose, but that's my opinion isn't it?
In fact let me go further:Right now there are people out there who are buying the books and other works of Alex Jones. I hate Alex Jones. I would spend every cent I own, and all I could borrow, to bring him down if I thought even for a second I could achieve it. There are people who think of Alex as a clown and a buffoon, but I do not. I despise Alex Jones and everything that Alex Jones has come to stand for. I think, if Alex Jones were a paid agent for a foreign power, he could not do more to harm this country than he's doing now. But I cannot obligate him to change his views.
Imagine this wasn't videogames, but books; both are forms of media are they not? If a book so wishes to have undeveloped or stereotypical minorities, and people enjoy it, then that is simply that. Are they racist/sexist/homophobic/-ist? Yes. Can we ethically anything about it? No. If the general scorn of everyone else is not enough, then what can we do?
2. No. It is a person's right to be a bigot. It is the right of others to ignore them. Society may scorn them, and that is just, but beyond this there is no option.
3. I feel any successful* effort to do so can only be positive *(shitty games will have shitty minority characters anyway)
Unleash the flames of War!
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Topic: Video Games and the Fun-Diversity Dichotomy (Read 23717 times)