Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[penguinofhonor]

People's tastes change because people press the issue.

People's tastes change because they become acclimated to what is available and refine their interests.

No one stopped disliking bikini chainmail because people started writing petitions.

But sure, one way to change people's taste is to press the issue. But that is precisely what people do not want to happen. For people to have "this is wrong" hit into their head over and over again until they just have to give in to make the yelling stop.

Pressing the issue isn't just petitions. That all-women indie game jam mentioned earlier is pressing the issue. People making comics and things circulating on social media are pressing the issue. People trying to hold developers accountable for their unequal treatment of women are pressing the issue, and that can change things and then we get better games that people get acclimated to and their opinions change.

[Neonivek]

People's tastes change because people press the issue.

People's tastes change because they become acclimated to what is available and refine their interests.

No one stopped disliking bikini chainmail because people started writing petitions.

But sure, one way to change people's taste is to press the issue. But that is precisely what people do not want to happen. For people to have "this is wrong" hit into their head over and over again until they just have to give in to make the yelling stop.

Pressing the issue isn't just petitions. That all-women indie game jam mentioned earlier is pressing the issue. People making comics and things circulating on social media are pressing the issue. People trying to hold developers accountable for their unequal treatment of women are pressing the issue, and that can change things and then we get better games that people get acclimated to and their opinions change.

Which has done... nothing.

More has been done with people just changing their tastes then there has making people outraged at videogames.

[Fniff]

For now. Down the road... who knows. Think long-term results.

[Neonivek]

For now. Down the road... who knows. Think long-term results.

I think those are short term changes with long term mistakes. Forcing the issue trying to create a aggressive community will only backfire in the opposite fashion.

Which it has already started backfiring mostly because it is extremely polarizing. How many "You are either with us or against us" statements has there been in this thread?

[Fniff]

You know, I think feminists should take a page out of Caitlin Moran's book. Being angry can be good in certain circumstances, but in others it makes you look charmless. To someone undecided about the issue (And yes, there are people who are undecided but don't hate women), yelling about feminism and yelling about staying in the kitchen all blur together into just yelling.

The best move is to be as charming as possible, then being angry at the right moments. That way, the anger seems much more potent since you don't use it as often.

[penguinofhonor]

For now. Down the road... who knows. Think long-term results.

I think those are short term changes. Forcing the issue trying to create a aggressive community will only backfire in the opposite fashion.

Which it has already started backfiring mostly because it is extremely polarizing. How many "You are either with us or against us" statements has there been in this thread?

Those are shitty internet arguments. They'll always be there and they're somewhat disconnected from the real situation. I think games are changing for the better.

[Fniff]

I'd agree with that as well. I mean, EA was recently voted to have one of the best LGBT representations in it's staff among similar corporations, for instance.
...
And that's all the good things you can say about EA. Thanks for coming, folks.

[Rolan7]

Was playing Farcry 3 co-op with friends last night (surprising amount of content and fun, netcode's buggy though)  At one point my character, Mikhail, kept switching to the shirtless "Hotshot" appearance.  It was pretty funny.  It was also slightly awkward...  We were there for cover-based co-op gameplay with an amazing selection of guns, not:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I mean, there's sure as hell a time and a place, but that doesn't mean I want to look like that in front of my straight buddies (who were playing a skinny chav and a fat cop).  I wanted to be a badass, without specifically being Rambo.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My point is, that glitch temporarily forced me to feel a fraction of what women have to do with in most games.  Can't be fat or plain or scarred, just hot or cute.  Sometimes modest clothes are available, sometimes you just have to be comfortable in a tank top.  Metal chestplates are almost guaranteed to contour to your boobs in a completely ahistorical and ineffective way, but it's so common that people don't even realize it's *just* pandering to the male gaze.

There's nothing wrong with people dressing up as sexy women in video games.  It's that every female character is required to be attractive.  The reasons are clear:
* Female characters are less common
* Male gamers don't want to see unattractive ones

Given that, of course women are going to feel excluded.  I feel personally insulted by #2, as a male gamer, but I worry that it's actually true in general.

[TamerVirus]

As well unlike most things Videogames are not protected under the belief that it is an artform. Thus people do not respect its artistic integrity in general, so criticism has a lot more impact because it is more of a criticism against the genre itself. Mind you this is changing, but you don't see anyone legally protecting the right for a game's artistic statements.

I went to the NY Museum of Modern Art awhile back and guess what I saw on display in one of the exhibitions.

Video games.

Dwarf Fortress, I kid you not, was on display. It's art, yo.

[Neonivek]

Well right now the major issue Fniff is that the problem has diminished so greatly that if you want to play a game with a strong female lead who has full autonomy over herself and isn't treated like a piece of candy...

You can do it. They aren't that uncommon and you can get them just by picking games randomly. I'd have a harder time finding an anime like that, then a videogame. Heck I'd have a harder time finding a movie like that then a videogame.

As well the statistic they always bring up is that male to female participation rates are 50/50 and in an exclusionary system you do not get such even results (Which is why I tried so hard to fight that statistic...)

As well things have been improving for years without pop feminists even getting involved. In fact the idea that "women shouldn't have giant boobs and fight in their underwear in a medieval fantasy" wasn't even "Feminist" it was just "a good idea" held by most gamers without the need to politicize.

So what is happening is people are trying to mobilize a community which largely sees a problem but finds it workable within the system they already have.

So the frustration of working with a community that largely doesn't want to mobilize, usually results in polarizing action, as they cannot be lightly persuaded.

For now. Down the road... who knows. Think long-term results.

I think those are short term changes. Forcing the issue trying to create a aggressive community will only backfire in the opposite fashion.

Which it has already started backfiring mostly because it is extremely polarizing. How many "You are either with us or against us" statements has there been in this thread?

Those are shitty internet arguments. They'll always be there and they're somewhat disconnected from the real situation. I think games are changing for the better.

Games are changing for the better, but not because of pop feminism. That has already proven to have nothing but negative results.

I don't want to say Feminist because, well, they been involved for a long time and was steadily gaining ground within the gaming culture. It is this new way of pop feminism and its aggressive "videogames should be ashamed of themselves because they hurt women everywhere" that I think is more of a problem... or the "Women are so equal to men, lets treat them special to prove it" tokenism that insults everyone instead of focusing on how it is no big deal and how people need to calm the heck down.

I guess what I am saying is... Hmm can't complain until the 25th so that is all I can say.

[Phmcw]

I'm sorry but this is not the way I see this "contreversy".

Peoples have been talking of women in videogame since I started playing them at 6 more than 20 years ago and games have been made by peoples of all genders and culture all over the world.
Being new and a "youth" hobby, videogames always attracted attentions and contreversies, and have been accused of everything from being murder simulator breedig psychopath to turning children into slobs.

The last trend arose within game "journalists", a breed known for its incompetence, corruption and stupidity that encouraged the bottom feeders of VG for years and was never shy of populating their pages with scantly clad women in hopes of attracting horny teenagers (because teenagers only care for nacked women, it's well known /s).

Now some of them jumped train, and began accusing "gamers" and "developers" of being filthy mysoginist and harassers of women.


It's cute but a) they have always been the worst offenders on the mysoginy side of things and b) the videogame public is already diverse and inclusive.
So what I see is a bunch of idiots agitating the gullible to turn against one of the most if not the most progressive and diverse media these days, and using America's feminism, which I consider backward, mysoginist and mysandrist itsef (yeah both).

No I'm not too happy with that.

[Fniff]

It's amazing how complicated an issue can get when the end result would just be a different spread of player models and voice-actors in games.

[Phmcw]

It's amazing how complicated an issue can get when the end result would just be a different spread of player models and voice-actors in games.

That would be an horrible way to "solve" this problem. I want "women" in videogames, not yet another skin.
Give me a game where you get pregnant, where the protagonist act like a girl I know, where you actually roleplay a women, not a "girl skin" on your average bland rpg.

Edit : And I'm convinced that it would be an huge commercial success.

[Fniff]

Sorry, I was being reductionist.
Though, thinking about it... I remember someone (Yahtzee, I believe) discussing how important the main character's femininity was to the plot, in the same way that James Sunderland had his masculinity tied to the plot of Silent Hill 2.
I believe he named Bayonetta as an example. Any other good ones, fine folk of Bay12?

[Neonivek]

It's amazing how complicated an issue can get when the end result would just be a different spread of player models and voice-actors in games.

Well, no.

The issues with females in videogames is quite a bit more diverse.

For example Chun-Li is the female lead of Street Fighter and is often called "The First Lady of Fighting Games", but her series tends to mostly relegate her to side duty. Same with Tekken and Soul Calibur.

I actually do believe there is a problem in videogames that need to improve. I just largely disagree with the methods stated here as well I don't feel a deep sense of disgust and displeasure from it.

It's amazing how complicated an issue can get when the end result would just be a different spread of player models and voice-actors in games.

That would be an horrible way to "solve" this problem. I want "women" in videogames, not yet another skin.
Give me a game where you get pregnant, where the protagonist act like a girl I know, where you actually roleplay a women, not a "girl skin" on your average bland rpg.

Edit : And I'm convinced that it would be an huge commercial success.

I find this VERY interesting because what you just said... Could also be considered INCREDIBLY sexist.

Yet... Yeah when was the last time a videogame actually let the protagonist get pregnant and not make it like a jump cut "ohh look I already had a baby" like Fable 2 and 3 does it.

Sorry, I was being reductionist.
Though, thinking about it... I remember someone (Yahtzee, I believe) discussing how important the main character's femininity was to the plot, in the same way that James Sunderland had his masculinity tied to the plot of Silent Hill 2.
I believe he named Bayonetta as an example. Any other good ones, fine folk of Bay12?

Female characters where their femininity is important to them?

Silent Hill 3's protagonist was a bit like that... Rosella from Kings Quest is mostly about her fight for independence and adventure in a world where she is expected to be a typical Princess (not helped by the fact that the Queen used to be a typical Princess... which given she grew up and became queen actually makes her interesting too).