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.