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[LordBucket]

I can't speak for WoW, but Guild Wars 2 definitely has disproportionate sexualization

Ok. But this goes back to what I said on page 1: "Different people want different things in their games. There are different games that provide those different things that people want."

There are some people who want sexualied women in their games. Games exist for those people to play. And there are people who don't want sexualized women in their games. Games exist for those people to play to. And it's not like there's any particular shortage of them.

If the point here is to complain that games exist that appeal to other people...I have a problem with that. If you have what you want, but other people also have what they want and you want them to not have what they want because it's not what you want, that's not reasonable.

[smeeprocket]

But in a story every character, besides the protagonists and antagonists of course, is an object to prop up the other characters.

Think of it like this. If someone puts a dog in a movie, there's a good chance they are going to kill that dog at some point to get an emotional response from the viewer. The dog isn't important, the response people have to the dog being hurt or killed is. The need for vengeance because of the dog being hurt or the solidification of someone as a bad person is what the writer is after.

This is generally why you get excessive violence towards women in video games. An emotional response form the male gamer. A need to protect or avenge the damsel. The damsel can never save herself, and even if she does she with afterwards be fundamentally broken and need the male protagonist to help her pick up the pieces.

[Reelya]

here's Anita Sarkeesian on the issue:

So when games casually use sexualized violence as a ham-fisted form of character development for the “bad guys” it reinforces a popular misconception about gendered violence by framing it as something abnormal, as a cruelty only committed by the most transparently evil strangers. In reality, however, violence against women, and sexual violence in particular, is a common everyday occurrence often perpetrated by “normal men” known and trusted by those targeted.

The truth is that the vast majority of cases are committed by friends, colleagues, relatives, and intimate partners. The gendered violence epidemic is a deep-seated cultural problem present in the homes, communities and workplaces of many millions of women all over the world. It is not something that mostly happens in dark alleys at the hands of cartoon villains twisting nefarious-looking mustaches.

But this actually goes against the best practices in using public messages to effect change in behavior:

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-proof-factors-2/

“Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, destroying the natural state of the Petrified Forest.”

The researchers found that this sort of sign encouraged more stealing (it tripled the amount of theft) because it was evidence that many other people were already stealing from the forest. Instead of discouraging people, it made them more confident that stealing was “okay.”

You’ll notice that they try to claim that the activity is “wrong” but do so by saying that lots of people are doing it

In fact, making the statement "only the most evil fuck would beat their wife" would be a good way of using known psychology to make guys less likely to do that bad thing. So it's definitely not a "given" that it's bad social policy to present wife-beaters as the ultimate evil. In fact, going around saying "normal looking guys like you beat their wife every day, don't be one of them!" has been shown in other contexts to embolden the bad behavior, because the wife beaters now assume they're "just like everyone else" so it's not so wrong after all. You have to single out wrongdoers and make them feel isolated and ashamed, not "part of the gang".

[smeeprocket]

I can't speak for WoW, but Guild Wars 2 definitely has disproportionate sexualization

Ok. But this goes back to what I said on page 1: "Different people want different things in their games. There are different games that provide those different things that people want."

There are some people who want sexualied women in their games. Games exist for those people to play. And there are people who don't want sexualized women in their games. Games exist for those people to play to. And it's not like there's any particular shortage of them.

If the point here is to complain that games exist that appeal to other people...I have a problem with that. If you have what you want, but other people also have what they want and you want them to not have what they want because it's not what you want, that's not reasonable.

once again the problem is that the number of games that appeal to women, or preferably, that appeal to everyone (which should be the standard) are not there. Why should you get the bulk of the games catering to you?

I don't know what you mean by there is not a shortage, because yea, there is, and the number of women in the industry is also abysmally low.

edit: reelya, GTA V, sometimes the goal is to BE the bad guy. (and yes you can be pretty damn violent to guys in that to. My point being, bad guys are also romanticized in our society, and the gaming culture alienates and desires violence against women.)

[Neonivek]

Stuff

Just a quote above so people can get to the post I am talking to. As I am going to do snippets as usual.

Well considering the hiring rate of women in the game industry (i.e. like, tiny. I"ll get a number when I'm not at work.), I think I can say that there are pervasive sexist qualities in the majority of AAA games.

Ohh no, you are pretty on the dang money when it comes to the amount of sexism in AAA games.

It's a problem because it super-trivializes the deaths of represented women, marking them as that "thing" you're talking about. It's reducing them to an object. It's saying "women aren't humans, this is just a plot point with legs and voice acting". It's trivializing the lives of, you know, a sex/gender that has been systematically trivialized their whole lives into "things" to have and play with, and it enforces that trivialization of women to men playing the games.

Which the issue is that it is an easy statement to make and applies too broadly. I could make the same speech about the DMV and it would have just as much meaning. As well abuse doesn't objectify them in it of itself nor trivialize. The difference is mostly the "Women in refrigerators" aspect, in that their abuse furthers someone else's plot or story.

Women don't have a say in their own abuse. It doesn't further their story.

Dawn being with an increasingly abusive Boyfriend in phantasmagoria (Sans the rape scene.. which was rather unneeded, but in that case it was more because it was tasteless) was fine as the game was entirely her and those scenes not only informed her character and her old relationship with her boyfriend and furthered her story (that and... well... her boyfriend was barely a character)

Yet even then trivializing things is not an inherent evil. There is a reason videogames have murder and death. Yet people recognize that those things in real life are bad as well. It isn't an aggravating factor to just be trivialized, it is how it is being done as well.

But in a story every character, besides the protagonists and antagonists of course, is an object to prop up the other characters.

Think of it like this. If someone puts a dog in a movie, there's a good chance they are going to kill that dog at some point to get an emotional response from the viewer. The dog isn't important, the response people have to the dog being hurt or killed is. The need for vengeance because of the dog being hurt or the solidification of someone as a bad person is what the writer is after.

This is generally why you get excessive violence towards women in video games. An emotional response form the male gamer. A need to protect or avenge the damsel. The damsel can never save herself, and even if she does she with afterwards be fundamentally broken and need the male protagonist to help her pick up the pieces.

Actually killing off pets in movies is actually pretty rare, mostly because it is considered crueler to the audience then killing off one of the characters.

As well excessive violence towards women in videogames is a rather large stretch. The few times women get REALLY abused, and in situations where it is only them, is when they are the main character. Outside of that their chances rather diminish.

I am trying to think of an example where a woman, in a game where it isn't equal opportunity, gets excessively abused.

I can't speak for WoW, but Guild Wars 2 definitely has disproportionate sexualization

Ok. But this goes back to what I said on page 1: "Different people want different things in their games. There are different games that provide those different things that people want."

There are some people who want sexualied women in their games. Games exist for those people to play. And there are people who don't want sexualized women in their games. Games exist for those people to play to. And it's not like there's any particular shortage of them.

If the point here is to complain that games exist that appeal to other people...I have a problem with that. If you have what you want, but other people also have what they want and you want them to not have what they want because it's not what you want, that's not reasonable.

once again the problem is that the number of games that appeal to women, or preferably, that appeal to everyone (which should be the standard) are not there. Why should you get the bulk of the games catering to you?

I don't know what you mean by there is not a shortage, because yea, there is, and the number of women in the industry is also abysmally low.

It is interesting to note that in spite videogame playing males versus females is basically 50/50... If you eliminate "casual games" like phone apps, Webgames, and the like... You get something closer to 30/70 f/m. As WELL the amount of women who will play extremely violent videogames is usually around 15%.

That should explain some discrepancy.

Though it should be noted that appealing to males doesn't mean it is unappealing to females. In fact I've been offput by some game's attempts at male appeal.

But I'll put it another way. Well Anecdotally because extremely violent videogames are as far as "appealing to men to a repellent degree" as you usually get.

I am a Gamer in a gaming culture that currently favors casual gamers who generally speaking do not have my skills, knowledge, tastes, or expertise.

Am I being wronged?

You cannot argue against marketing that is successful because you feel it shouldn't be for reasons outside its purview. What you can argue is that there is more of a market, and more of a market they can build, then they let themselves realize.

[penguinofhonor]

I can't speak for WoW, but Guild Wars 2 definitely has disproportionate sexualization

Ok. But this goes back to what I said on page 1: "Different people want different things in their games. There are different games that provide those different things that people want."

There are some people who want sexualied women in their games. Games exist for those people to play. And there are people who don't want sexualized women in their games. Games exist for those people to play to. And it's not like there's any particular shortage of them.

If the point here is to complain that games exist that appeal to other people...I have a problem with that. If you have what you want, but other people also have what they want and you want them to not have what they want because it's not what you want, that's not reasonable.

I'm just going to drag up this Palsch post from an old sexism thread. There are sources if you follow the link.

Sexualised female characters have measurable and negative effects on immediate attitudes towards women, and negative effects on female player's self image. While it's not extreme, there were measured reductions in women's self-efficacy after playing as a sexualised character. They also measured significant changes in attitudes among both men and women, with them having lower opinions of women's physical and mental capacities. The study was limited in scope and size, but it's worth noting that prior studies had found stronger effects (notably hits to self-esteem that weren't measured here) so I'm fairly confident saying this is reasonable low-end measure of the negative immediate effects of sexualised female video game characters.

Which is to say, playing games with sexualised characters can change how people think about women in a negative manner and to a real, measurable degree.

This doesn't mean that sexualised characters should never be used, but maybe it should be kept in mind before they become the default, or are argued to be empowering and positive experiences.

[smeeprocket]

Stuff

Just a quote above so people can get to the post I am talking to. As I am going to do snippets as usual.

Well considering the hiring rate of women in the game industry (i.e. like, tiny. I"ll get a number when I'm not at work.), I think I can say that there are pervasive sexist qualities in the majority of AAA games.

Ohh no, you are pretty on the dang money when it comes to the amount of sexism in AAA games.

It's a problem because it super-trivializes the deaths of represented women, marking them as that "thing" you're talking about. It's reducing them to an object. It's saying "women aren't humans, this is just a plot point with legs and voice acting". It's trivializing the lives of, you know, a sex/gender that has been systematically trivialized their whole lives into "things" to have and play with, and it enforces that trivialization of women to men playing the games.

Which the issue is that it is an easy statement to make and applies too broadly. I could make the same speech about the DMV and it would have just as much meaning. As well abuse doesn't objectify them in it of itself nor trivialize. The difference is mostly the "Women in refrigerators" aspect, in that their abuse furthers someone else's plot or story.

Women don't have a say in their own abuse. It doesn't further their story.

Dawn being with an increasingly abusive Boyfriend in phantasmagoria (Sans the rape scene.. which was rather unneeded, but in that case it was more because it was tasteless) was fine as the game was entirely her and those scenes not only informed her character and her old relationship with her boyfriend and furthered her story (that and... well... her boyfriend was barely a character)

Yet even then trivializing things is not an inherent evil. There is a reason videogames have murder and death. Yet people recognize that those things in real life are bad as well. It isn't an aggravating factor to just be trivialized, it is how it is being done as well.

But in a story every character, besides the protagonists and antagonists of course, is an object to prop up the other characters.

Think of it like this. If someone puts a dog in a movie, there's a good chance they are going to kill that dog at some point to get an emotional response from the viewer. The dog isn't important, the response people have to the dog being hurt or killed is. The need for vengeance because of the dog being hurt or the solidification of someone as a bad person is what the writer is after.

This is generally why you get excessive violence towards women in video games. An emotional response form the male gamer. A need to protect or avenge the damsel. The damsel can never save herself, and even if she does she with afterwards be fundamentally broken and need the male protagonist to help her pick up the pieces.

Actually killing off pets in movies is actually pretty rare, mostly because it is considered crueler to the audience then killing off one of the characters.

As well excessive violence towards women in videogames is a rather large stretch. The few times women get REALLY abused, and in situations where it is only them, is when they are the main character. Outside of that their chances rather diminish.

I am trying to think of an example where a woman, in a game where it isn't equal opportunity, gets excessively abused.

I can't speak for WoW, but Guild Wars 2 definitely has disproportionate sexualization

Ok. But this goes back to what I said on page 1: "Different people want different things in their games. There are different games that provide those different things that people want."

There are some people who want sexualied women in their games. Games exist for those people to play. And there are people who don't want sexualized women in their games. Games exist for those people to play to. And it's not like there's any particular shortage of them.

If the point here is to complain that games exist that appeal to other people...I have a problem with that. If you have what you want, but other people also have what they want and you want them to not have what they want because it's not what you want, that's not reasonable.

once again the problem is that the number of games that appeal to women, or preferably, that appeal to everyone (which should be the standard) are not there. Why should you get the bulk of the games catering to you?

I don't know what you mean by there is not a shortage, because yea, there is, and the number of women in the industry is also abysmally low.

It is interesting to note that in spite videogame playing males versus females is basically 50/50... If you eliminate "casual games" like phone apps, Webgames, and the like... You get something closer to 30/70 f/m. As WELL the amount of women who will play extremely violent videogames is usually around 15%.

That should explain some discrepancy.

Though it should be noted that appealing to males doesn't mean it is unappealing to females. In fact I've been offput by some game's attempts at male appeal.

But I'll put it another way.

I am a Gamer in a gaming culture that currently favors casual gamers who generally speaking do not have my skills, knowledge, tastes, or expertise.

Am I being wronged?

You cannot argue against marketing that is successful because you feel it shouldn't be for reasons outside its purview. What you can argue is that there is more of a market, and more of a market they can build, then they let themselves realize.

your numbers are wrong and the whole women only play candy crush saga thing is tiresome. MMOs have a 41% female gaming audience for example. Hardly 30/70

I am shocked at the number of people that try to stereotype women as playing only angry birds and such. what an offensive thing to do.

[Reelya]

It's a problem because it super-trivializes the deaths of represented women, marking them as that "thing" you're talking about. It's reducing them to an object. It's saying "women aren't humans, this is just a plot point with legs and voice acting". It's trivializing the lives of, you know, a sex/gender that has been systematically trivialized their whole lives into "things" to have and play with, and it enforces that trivialization of women to men playing the games.

I don't see how the male puppets dying is qualitatively different to female puppets dying in the context you're talking about. All of them are "plot points with legs and voice acting". Does being a "plot point" trivilize a female character in some way that male characters are exempted from?

I'd say that if saving a woman is seen as a qualitatively more noble goal than saving a male character, and their suffering is seen as an especially bad thing, this doesn't really "trivialize" the female characters. The male characters are definitely more disposable in general and their deaths don't even warrant a line of dialogue. Having saving women as some meta-goal doesn't trvialize women, it marks them as important, and specifically plays off and reinforces the cultural idea that women's safety is a noble goal, rather than it being a "throw away" thing.

[Empiricist]

Perhaps for the sake of making this debate somewhat more credible, could people in future provide citations to any statistics that they are using so that they can be critiqued and whatnot?

[Neonivek]

your numbers are wrong and the whole women only play candy crush saga thing is tiresome. MMOs have a 41% female gaming audience for example. Hardly 30/70

I am shocked at the number of people that try to stereotype women as playing only angry birds and such. what an offensive thing to do.

To me it has more to do with the fact that you have had a very engendered hobby that has slowly overtime started to lose its gender identity and as such newer players flock to easier titles.

As well Candy Crush is extremely popular and skews the numbers solo. I eliminate it because it hides the bigger issues.

Because I take the 50/50 ratio as a sexism in it of itself that excuses the industry of its male marketing because "well if it truly was hurting the industry there would be less female videogamers".

Rather then an outside influence that is related to videogames, but not part of the videogame culture people are referring to here (in a similar way that Comic Books and Novels are both books but don't share the same culture), skewing the numbers in favor of the videogame industry looking pristine.

Perhaps for the sake of making this debate somewhat more credible, could people in future provide citations to any statistics that they are using so that they can be critiqued and whatnot?

I checked those... it is a black hole mostly because they don't show their work.

[smeeprocket]

http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet%28National%29.pdf

A quick reference to why violence against women by men in video games is unsettling and troublesome.

This is real, this is rarely actually addressed, and it should be handled in fiction with kid gloves.

[Neonivek]

http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet%28National%29.pdf

A quick reference to why violence against women by men in video games is unsettling and troublesome.

This is real, this is rarely actually addressed, and it should be handled in fiction with kid gloves.

It... doesn't give any reason except that "it exists".

It is rarely actually addressed because people have built it up to such a degree that you aren't allowed to talk about it.

Everyone knows it exists, everyone knows it is bad, everyone knows it is traumatizing.

No one here is even allowed to not know how terrible it is.

[Shinotsa]

If we could get a representative population of women in programming this would really be a non-issue. As it stands game design and programming is a mainly male dominated (I want to say somewhere around 90% from what I've heard in the past but don't have sources) field and if we had something near a 50/50 split then women could sexualize themselves as much as they want, much as it's their right to be a part of other forms of sexualized media.

Until we get to that point, however, we have to accept that gaming is an industry dominated by younger male consumers, and that companies will cater to their wants. We can't nitpick and say that this or that isn't equal when society gives an incentive to promote inequality

[smeeprocket]

http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet%28National%29.pdf

A quick reference to why violence against women by men in video games is unsettling and troublesome.

This is real, this is rarely actually addressed, and it should be handled in fiction with kid gloves.

It... doesn't give any reason except that "it exists".

It is rarely actually addressed because people have built it up to such a degree that you aren't allowed to talk about it.

What does that even mean? Built it up to such a degree? Like do you feel the needs of the abusers have not been fairly represented so it is a sensitive topic for them? I can't think of any advocates against domestic violence that don't want to talk about it. Perhaps I am not reading what you are saying correctly. I do know that the system is built on punishing the victim over the perpetrator and trivialize the victim's suffering.

Yes, it exists, it is a serious issue. So when you represent it, you address it as such. It shouldn't be a cheap go to for a response.

edit: Shino, gaming isn't dominted by younger male consumers, it's just catered to them. And frankly, waiting until the male industry feels like hiring women before getting representation is sort of a cycle of not going to happen.

[scrdest]

If we could get a representative population of women in programming this would really be a non-issue. As it stands game design and programming is a mainly male dominated (I want to say somewhere around 90% from what I've heard in the past but don't have sources) field and if we had something near a 50/50 split then women could sexualize themselves as much as they want, much as it's their right to be a part of other forms of sexualized media.

Until we get to that point, however, we have to accept that gaming is an industry dominated by younger male consumers, and that companies will cater to their wants. We can't nitpick and say that this or that isn't equal when society gives an incentive to promote inequality

And yet one of the games that is brought up reeeeeeeally often in this discussion and complained about, the new Tomb Raider, has a female writer. So it doesn't seem like more representation among creators -> better representation in the end product.