Wow, and you thought Fat, slutty, or Ugly had harsh words...

[hector530]

Some people here get it and some have it going over their heads. The problem isn't that they are sexy, the problem is that they are sexy for the sake of it. Visual appearance is part of the overall design of a character and when you see women dressed up as sex workers, act out totally out of character and don't really reflect their personality which you are trying to convay (examples Edi and Miranda from ME, as well as half the current games which exist at the moment). This does not mean that I'm going to be up in arms if a woman(or man) has sex as part of their visual identity (examples Isabela, Morrigan and Zevran from DA). What I really want is more open character designs besides buff-male hero or sexy pointless chick and to stop focusing on sex to make their point. What I also want is that romances to have more than you + me = sex = love and to be more realistic in a sence, a strong female lead/gay male/bisexual person and more shapes besides buff and skinny (essenchally the end of mary/marty stu). Less stupid iron skirts from Oblivion and more of anyone that isn't an example of male masculinity. :thumbsup:

 

yes bioware has a pure record of female roles who are sexy but its part of the "design" of the character so its ok

 

*talks to miranda LOL ASS VIEWPOINTS *Ashley has bigger perky breast then Miranda in ME3 for no reason.

 

yep bioware never takes the low road and oblivion's legion armor has skirts on both male and female because you know its based on the roman legion. o energy your bioware fangirlism is showing again.

 

now on to Anita Sarkeesian, im actually wondering if she actually is a real gamer like she says she is? first of all i find it annoying and kinda insulting that shes pretend playing. she wants to make a video doc for gamers yet she thinks no one would notice? at least turn on the damn controller! at least she didnt add 8-bit video game sound effects like a lot movies and tv shows do. then in an interview she says Chell from the Portal games is a good female role. wait the portal girl has a name? and how is she a good female role? she says nothing, does whatever a robot tells her. in fact you could say the character from portal has no character. if "Chell" is a good video character then "doom dude" is a great character!

 

judging off her other videos mainly the lego one i cant help but think this video project is gonna be a one-sided affair showing only one view point. in the LEGOS video doc she tries to makes out lego to be a bunch of sexist who want to keep women in their place by..... making a lego kitchen set thats colored pink and purple? really? thats it? if im to be convinced that lego is evil and wants to show little girls their place in the world i will need more evidence then pink and purple lego bricks. then in her kickerstarter video she talks about sexualized females and shows lilith from borderlands? ok how is litith sexualized, because she blows you a kiss when you pick her? OMG HOW SEXUAL!!! also shes the best/strongest playable character in the game so +1 for female empowerment right?

 

idk if people are think this is gonna be an intelligence conversation about females in games i think you'll be disappointed. you cant have an intelligence conversation by yourself and you cant have a good doc showing only the view point of a feminist thoughts on video games.

 

but i agree with her only on the movie "sucker punch". such a stupid movie, it was billed as a female empowerment movie but badyface/badydoll/whatever-the-hell-her-name-is only saving grace is............. her looks. yep she doesnt overpower, over will, over come, out smart the evil men. nope, she does a strip tease that makes men focus on her. what a great female empowerment movie!!!!

Edited June 14, 2012 by hector530

[brokenergy]

Snip

 

:facepalm: And with true hector fastion you are missing the point, like usual. I bet TES must be a great role model for women, considering how you consider the forsworn women to be a great example of "female strength". :rolleyes:

 

Why is that a problem exactly? That's like complaining that a porn mag has pictures of naked or nearly naked people in it. If the characters are sexy for the sake of being sexy, it is because the designers of those characters wanted them that way to either fill a given role in the game, or just be something for adolescent males to oogle. It is the way it is because there is a large market for it.

 

It's not that there isn't a market on the other side, it's just that that market hasn't really evolved beyond Twillight and other things that are usually too few and far between and often only noticed because of the rather large void that exists.

 

The REAL problem is that developers can't seem to get it in their heads that anyone other than sex-crazed, adolescent males who can only understand toilet humor plays games these days. They just can't seem to make the connection that most of the gamers these days are adults able to sort out complex plot points and recognize a broad range of themes and styles, and nearly half of those are female. That is really the only problem here, and that is why the forms that games take are, and always have been rather lopsided.

 

We are on the same page on this, I'm just not really clear about what I'm talking about. It's not that I have an issue with sex being part of a character, the issue is that developers and the gaming community in general seems to trivialise women by not consistently bring a woman's visual identity with her personality (or in otherwords,her appearance does not mess well with her personality). I'll bring up Isabella from DA2 and EDI from ME3 to prove my point of the huge gap between developers (even from different developer teams) and gamers and the female portion in general.

 

Izzy was developed with sex being part of her design, bring up issues of modern feminism such as sexual liberation, double standards, body image etc. Many of her interactions with other female characters goes beyond "I haz sex tee hee" and deal with does issue but it is done in her style. When you look at her, you immediately call her with tons of female slander because of how she looks and don't think beyond her personailty because you have already judged her to be that. But if you remove that character design, then you are missing out on her character and would immediately become more shallow. This is an example of a character, while still fanservice, of being a character beyond sexy.

 

EDI is an example where the developers thought that it would be cool to bring in a sex bot (yes it is true). While she is dealing with the philosophical issues of surrounding AI's (like all science fiction), her visual design is not consistant with her personality and in turn cheapens her character. That's the problem that I have, out of all the designs they could have made, the ME team chose for her to wear spandex latex rather than something more interesting. EDI is interesting but like many other female ME characters, the whole sex appeal has gone over the top.

 

Essentially I'm agreeing with you, developers and marketing team really need to do better with women and create characters that are beyond with what we are seeing currently. :biggrin:

[ginnyfizz]

I am amazed that none of you has even commented on the disturbing subtext of a lot of those comments, which is worse than the sexism - a lot of those comments are grotesquely anti Semitic and use arguments lifted straight from Nazi philosophy. Look at anything by KTSWhite, for example, which I will not quote and sully these pages.

[Vagrant0]

Essentially I'm agreeing with you, developers and marketing team really need to do better with women and create characters that are beyond with what we are seeing currently. :biggrin:

You still aren't quite getting it. Those characters you mentioned are what are called in the literary circle as "round characters" since there is a fair amount of explained depth to them that is made clear through the narrative of the medium. Most of the characters in games are "flat characters", meaning that relatively little of what goes on in their head is shared with the player, and they exist only to provide flavor or scenery. For a game designer, you can't really spend hours upon hours of production time going into lengthy backstories and sharing it with the player in most game genres, and most wouldn't care to know that much about the character they pick for a fighting game or similar. Even in the RPG genre it would eventually become tiring to learn about the history of every single character you come across. As is, most of those points end up being click-through once people see enough to get the general sense. Games really aren't a medium which is suited for having more than a few well developed characters, and really having all that backstory could really take away from the enjoyment of the game.

 

Take Mario for example. This iconic videogame character is flat, and is quite heavily stereotyped. You don't need a lengthy history to enjoy the game, and having such a history could potentially ruin any ideals you have attached to him (see Mario as a terrorist argument). Similarly Peach/toadstool/Daisy is also a flat character, and while she can apparently fight with some capability, she still gets taken "hostage" every time. On one end it's because the game needs a premise for the player to care about and identify with, on the other end thinking about it too hard could lead to conclusions that she is either fickle or really digs strong men with shells... At which point Mario is breaking things and just beating the hell out of the other guy to just perpetuate a destructive and dysfunctional relationship. But this isn't really information that would make the game more enjoyable, and really these characters were made at a time when there wasn't much capability to explain the backstory or care about a continuing franchise. This is also where flat characters are more effective. You don't need to know their motivations, who they are, or even their name, you know instantly by the situation or how they relate to others what role they are meant to play. Mario could look like anything (eg: kirby) and players would still recognize that character as a protagonist. Add a victim of any shape, gender, species, or composition and that protagonist becomes a hero. Add a force which tries to stop the protagonist and it becomes the antagonist. The standard of "women as victims needing to be saved" comes from the standard of chivalry and our own universal acknowledgment of these themes. I'm not going to touch the argument of Chivalry Vs. Feminism though, since that never goes anywhere.

 

The point is that usually it isn't practical or even ideal to go into length describing character motivations when you have social norms and notions with which you can borrow from to make certain qualities about a character implied. This is why movies usually used villains belonging to a group that was seen as opposing "good" (Native Americans, Immigrants, Nazis, Corporate Fat-cats, Soviets, Terrorists, Biker Gangs), so that they didn't need to go into length explaining that "this is the bad guy", and were able to just pull from the social assumptions about those groups. When you have someone who has limited human interaction, and almost none with attractive women (aside from teasing and toying with emotions) designing female characters... Of course they will be overtly sexy since this is usually the extent of the interaction that they get with those kinds of people, and it usually doesn't matter from a narrative standpoint. Lara Croft could be a slim, freckled, pigfaced woman with slight chest and she could still perform the role... But you probably won't get players who would care to stare at her backside (or frontside) for dozens of hours through the course of the game (similar to "Man Butt Syndrome" where regardless how fun a game might be, once you realize that you have the image of the hero-character's backside forever etched in your memory, the game becomes less fun).

 

 

My comment however was that the types of games designed to appeal to a female audience range from "girly" games exploding with pink and pastels, over-simplified and trivial situations, and graphics that would make most males cringe; or games with heavy narrative, reasonable depth, and usually aren't in English. Oddly enough Japan (you know, that country who is "extremely sexist") is leaps and bounds ahead of the West as far as making games designed for a female audience as atleast a portion of their game development is producing visual novels and adventure games with positive female characters. But that really isn't good enough when you consider that the majority of these games are geared towards a teenage audience (just like the West). Game makers in general just aren't making many games for adults that aren't overtly sexual, so the there really isn't much interest in adding depth, or dealing with situations in a mature and reasonable manner. But this too is actually part of the whole issue of game makers trying to appeal to as many players as possible, regardless of age group.

 

 

@ginny

I didn't actually read many of her comments since the core discussion is one which has been had thousands of times before and there wasn't any impression of anything new being said. Just because they're a pro-active woman doesn't mean they are presenting a positive impression of women, or feminists for that matter.

[hector530]

@enegry no forsworn are just crazy bastards. not every female in video games has to me a role model geezzz. they can be mindless henchmen too

 

but back to the subject at hand

 

the problem here is that people think they are gonna get a 60 minutes style in depth reporting YOU WONT. look at her videos! they're sallow and very biased. people are being fooled. dont believe me, look at her "ABOUT THIS PROJECT" in kickstarter she never talks about reporting or journalism. people are paying 130,000 for HER OPINION ON THE SUBJECT. youre not getting in depth reporting, not getting intelligence conversation. youre getting a fox news style report!!!

 

look at her videos. look at the lego one she attacks and tries to make lego looks sexist based on a lego set for girls thats a kitchen set colored pin/purple. thats it! thats the whole base for her attack worse is that she never gave lego a chance to defend themselves, no letters, no calls just a one sided completely biased attack. sounds a lot like fox news doesnt it? you think she's gonna give a chance to all the developers she gonna attack to defend themselves? hell no, just another her biased opinion thats all.

 

i agree this sexism in games should be debated but not by her. its not a debate, its not a intelligence conversation remember you are paying 130,000 dollars FOR HER OPINION!!! go read her kickstarter and watch her videos if you dont believe me.

[Vagrant0]

You could have just simply said that the core of her argument kinda just boils down to the same "boys play with G.I Joes, girls play with Barbie" crap that has been going on since the 70's. It never occurs that perhaps the reason why fashion, cooking and light colors are marketed to women is because generally women are more likely to show an interest in these things. It's not that they dislike, or even understand the medium, the bee up their butt is really that there is any gender-based divide in interests or skills at all. And at that point, you're pretty much trying to go against an immovable mountain that is backed by both nature and universal cultural norms.

 

It's not that there isn't room for improvement. It's that people like this don't want improvement and are just looking for a stickman argument to point to to explain why the world isn't the way they want it to be. A genderless society, frankly, doesn't work. Even if you have everyone in that society the same sex, one group will always be predisposed towards predominantly masculine interests and behaviors, and one towards predominantly feminine behaviors. This can be plainly seen in most heterosexual and homosexual relationships and independently developed in every culture. Granted, there is sometimes some neutral behaviors which can be masculine in one culture and feminine in another, but even then, these usually have an aspect or premise to the behavior which becomes more masculine or feminine within that culture.

 

Social pressures to conform to a given standard are natural, and most of those with any education in childhood development can tell you that giving a child a clear sense of identity is essential to emotional and social development. It is not to say that boys can't play with Barbie and still end up heterosexual and capable males, but that the way that they play and the stories they tell are usually an indication of how a child views the world and eventually how they relate themselves to it. When it is enforced too strictly, you have children fixating on those things because it is something against their parent's wishes, or they develop negative (sometimes strong) attitudes for or against those interests.

[Rennn]

 

Equality is good, but in the process you lose those firm definitions of identity that are necessary for people to find their place in the world. The sexual division of labor didn't occur as an accident, or because of some man deciding to state his importance and make it law. It happened as a product of natural sexual cycles and sex-based development in the brain. The ideal is to have enough freedom for people to have some say in their life, but still have clearly defined roles, both socially and sexually.

 

I agreed with your post, up until you said this. While a division of strength is natural, physical strength does not define us. Femininity and masculinity are subjective definitions that change from culture to culture, and can be changed or equalized in time. Even if I play along and say that dominant males is the "natural order of things", as humans, we can do better than follow natural order. If we needed to follow a natural order we wouldn't be curing almost every disease on the planet. As humans, we can and must achieve total equality for both genders of all races. Knowing this has not hampered the development of my individuality any more than abolishing slavery robbed former slaves of "their place".

Edited June 14, 2012 by Rennn

[ziitch]

Everything has been pretty much said on my opinion - If females are portrayed negatively and unrealistically, then the males also need to get the very same treatment that they also deserve. Documentaries aren't supposed to just be about one-sided biased opinions, but a balance of opinions with equal representations on both sides - She would just not need to show the problems with female characters, but also the problem with male characters, and then have a balance of other opinions on both pro- and anti- realism when it comes to characters.

 

Otherwise, your documentary isn't a documentary, it's simply propaganda. :facepalm:

 

Basically, if they want a change, they have to go with a "blank slate" solution - When it comes to this, all previous data has to be completely ignored and thrown out for reason of bias, and new, unbiased data has to create foundation for the structure that will reach the goal. It's the hardest of solutions, but it would help create a system that is fair to everyone.

 

Edit: You know what we really need a documentary on? Common sense. Society could really use a reminder of what it is and when to use it...

Edited June 14, 2012 by ziitch

[Vagrant0]

I agreed with your post, up until you said this. While a division of strength is natural, physical strength does not define us. Femininity and masculinity are subjective definitions that change from culture to culture, and can be changed or equalized in time. Even if I play along and say that dominant males is the "natural order of things", as humans, we can do better than follow natural order. If we needed to follow a natural order we wouldn't be curing almost every disease on the planet. As humans, we can and must achieve total equality for both genders of all races. Knowing this has not hampered the development of my individuality any more than abolishing slavery robbed former slaves of "their place".

I never said division of strength. I said division of labor. I'm guessing it is a quirk of the languages. What I am meaning by division of labor is that there are certain skills and proficiencies which are inherently more common among one gender or another simply as a result of how the brain develops during puberty, and even after. For example, persons of a feminine gender in general usually have a higher proficiency in communication skills and roles in which they cooperate with each other. Evidence for this tendency can be seen in almost every culture to some extent, and can even be observed in the way that young children relate to eachother. One example of this is that masculine children tend to sit along side eachother when having a conversation or when set in a task (thereby limiting the amount of information from body movements) while feminine children tend to sit facing eachother. The evidence for how these differences provide clues and tendencies towards ones identity either masculine or feminine is well documented among social psychologists. This tendency relates directly towards how these sorts of people approach tasks; persons of a feminine identity tend to work together on each task at a time pooling their knowledge and talents, persons of a masculine identity tend to divide up the tasks or focus on each one individually only seeking help when they get stuck, often in some sort of competition. These differences in how a person approaches a task is what makes them more or less effective in a given role.

 

This is not to say that these tendencies cannot be worked on, or that roles cannot be assumed for limited circumstances, but rather that this is generally the natural state of a person and how they are most comfortable. These tendencies are also not necessarily linked to a given sex, but rather how their brain develops and what sort of chemistry is at work.

 

Biologically things are a very different story. But my familiarity with this end of things is not quite good enough to explain in a way in which I'm not sticking a foot in my mouth. I'm pretty sure that almost everyone can make their own assumptions as to how males and females tend to differ biologically and how they have different hormone cycles and how those things might affect performance in any given role.

 

Trying to go against this is just short of trying to say that you can cure homosexuality. How we identify ourselves socially is not something that can be changed easily, and most can find some comfort in how they are.

 

To suggest that there is a real problem here is to suggest that some women don't actually enjoy talking about fashion and relationships to an exceeding length, but are doing so only to make others think that they are interested and knowledgeable in those areas as a means of making others jealous about that amount of knowledge... Which is so much like a woman to do.

[Rennn]

I never said division of strength. I said division of labor. I'm guessing it is a quirk of the languages. What I am meaning by division of labor is that there are certain skills and proficiencies which are inherently more common among one gender or another simply as a result of how the brain develops during puberty, and even after. For example, persons of a feminine gender in general usually have a higher proficiency in communication skills and roles in which they cooperate with each other. Evidence for this tendency can be seen in almost every culture to some extent, and can even be observed in the way that young children relate to eachother. One example of this is that masculine children tend to sit along side eachother when having a conversation or when set in a task (thereby limiting the amount of information from body movements) while feminine children tend to sit facing eachother. The evidence for how these differences provide clues and tendencies towards ones identity either masculine or feminine is well documented among social psychologists. This tendency relates directly towards how these sorts of people approach tasks; persons of a feminine identity tend to work together on each task at a time pooling their knowledge and talents, persons of a masculine identity tend to divide up the tasks or focus on each one individually only seeking help when they get stuck, often in some sort of competition. These differences in how a person approaches a task is what makes them more or less effective in a given role.

 

This is not to say that these tendencies cannot be worked on, or that roles cannot be assumed for limited circumstances, but rather that this is generally the natural state of a person and how they are most comfortable. These tendencies are also not necessarily linked to a given sex, but rather how their brain develops and what sort of chemistry is at work.

 

Biologically things are a very different story. But my familiarity with this end of things is not quite good enough to explain in a way in which I'm not sticking a foot in my mouth. I'm pretty sure that almost everyone can make their own assumptions as to how males and females tend to differ biologically and how they have different hormone cycles and how those things might affect performance in any given role.

 

Trying to go against this is just short of trying to say that you can cure homosexuality. How we identify ourselves socially is not something that can be changed easily, and most can find some comfort in how they are.

 

True, of course. I was just pointing out that people shouldn't be defined by a gender, and that genders shouldn't be anything but equal. While we can't force biological distinctions out of the species, we can determine how we react to differences and to a degree how we feel about those distinctions. I admit that genders have a few biological differences, but I don't think that any action should be taken based upon these differences, for the differences of individuals on a case-by-case basis count infinitely more.

 

On another note, in direct reply to none, videogames are a maturing medium. While a few break the trend and provide characters of every personality and every sex, most are still focused on males and females both as sex objects. There need to be people pushing the medium to mature, and it's probably safe to say that it will eventually improve. At the current time, males are portrayed to be tough meat-heads in many cases, but it's not nearly as overt as how females are shown. Most games take place in a battlefield of some kind. Consider Skyrim, Mass Effect, or Bulletstorm as examples. It makes sense that the males and females both would be wearing armor in these scenarios, which is probably why we see so many males in armor. By contrast, many females in these battlegrounds are wearing almost nothing. Skyrim and Mass Effect handle the issue admirably, especially Skyrim. It's virtually impossible to find a rule besides blanket equality in Skyrim. Even Bulletstorm, formerly the type of quick action shooter to embellish sexism, actually includes a strong woman who's wearing as much as the male characters. While I also don't have anything against nudity, it should be fairly equal, with some allowed degree of random error.

 

In addition, equality can be bad if both genders are equally distorted. For example, I would not consider it right for a game to equally feature enraged meat-head males and nearly naked, submissive females. That would arguably be the worst scenario. The best case would be for a game to show characters of both sexes with a variety of skills and personalities.

 

A common retort is that games are about escapism. I've been told that we should let people have their escapism. This is a false attempt to claim moral high ground. Even pretending for a moment that you escape by amplifying an issue of reality, escapism can easily be harmful. I play my games for escapism almost exclusively, I'm not degrading that function. However, it's impossible to pretend that escapism doesn't reflect real problems, and it can even feed them, just as anything can.

 

Allow me to extend an example from my own life. I wasn't the most enlightened 14 year old. I bought Soul Calibur several years ago in order to stare at virtual boob. Looking back, that didn't affect me much as a person, but that part of my life did have an impact which I later consciously reversed, and which I'm still reversing. Whatever caused me to become philosophical, whether it was depression or social anxiety, I don't regret the person that I've become. Having said that, I know that any media and any words can influence personality. At times it still seems remarkable that members of the opposite sex are actually people with as many fears and weaknesses as I have, and it's a little scary that this sexism still persists even though I've identified it. I'm not blaming games, I'm not blaming books, and I'm not blaming movies. Those can certainly strengthen bias, but first they have to reflect it. What we can do is reduce sexism as much as possible, and try to show people enough information so that they can discover their own biases for themselves, because bias is not a personality trait you can just point at and shout "fixed!"

 

Sorry if that was extremely long winded for a forum post. I'll probably get at least one TL:DR, especially now that I've mentioned it, lol. And... I forgot where I was going with this. *sigh*

That happens at 3:00 am. Hopefully this thread doesn't turn into a flame war, there have been enough of those on the topic.