But that's the problem with the "extra money from virtually unlimited products costing zero $ to duplicate - they don't really comply with the KS guidelines. That's why I am surprised that the Double Fine project was even allowed in the first place :
1. Funding for projects only.
A project has a clear goal, like making an album, a book, or a work of art. A project will eventually be completed, and something will be produced by it. A project is not open-ended. Starting a business, for example, does not qualify as a project.
No "fund my life" projects. Examples include projects to pay tuition or bills, go on vacation, or buy a new camera.
So indeed - regardless of the cause (please Ben, stop getting this all mixed up, it plays against your whole argument), if feel like there is some dangerous grey area with that kind of model.
Pretty much got to that part of the comic where they talk about Lollipop Chainsaw and knew I couldn't keep reading.
I'm all for realistic and deep female characters within context, but that doesn't mean I want to see the removal of silly unrealistic female characters within context.
That's why I am surprised that the Double Fine project was even allowed in the first place
Because double-fine can and will utilize all that money just by expanding the project, hence my joke about her hiring someone for special effects.
double-fine originally planned for a quirky minor 2d adventure game, now with all the money they can expand that until the money runs out, and as we know with duke nukem forever it's fully possible to put a shit-ton of money into a game.
Double-fine game and wasteland 2 were very good at describing where the extra money would go, wasteland 2 even went into detail on hiring outside talent and extra ports, and that all extra money would go into making it a bigger development.
Yup I understand that and see how it can scale up in some situations ... but I don't know, when it comes to creative projects I think we all know that more money does not (if ever) equals more content or more "cool" stuff. It's a bit like playing catch up with free money ... at the risk of blowing up the scope of a project, which can be harmful.
Anyways - sorry for the slight derail. Back on track, lets keep talking about boobs! (right ?)
The negative response to this Kickstarter's been pretty shocking, while at the same time completely unsurprising - an impressive feat, all things considered. Well done, internet, old bean.
Even if there's something about a particular argument that runs against the grain, I wish more people were willing to discuss some of the issues she's bringing up without dismissing her work entirely. I've seen a fair amount of 'I didn't like the way she spoke about X, so I'm free to write it off wholesale'. Anyone taking that stance is doing themselves a great disservice, not to mention ladies in general.
The negative response to this Kickstarter's been pretty shocking, while at the same time completely unsurprising - an impressive feat, all things considered. Well done, internet, old bean.
Even if there's something about a particular argument that runs against the grain, I wish more people were willing to discuss some of the issues she's bringing up without dismissing her work entirely. I've seen a fair amount of 'I didn't like the way she spoke about X, so I'm free to write it off wholesale'. Anyone taking that stance is doing themselves a great disservice, not to mention ladies in general.
While you're correct that we shouldn't be painting someone with by a few words we disagree with it is almost impossible to avoid. What she says are arguments, not simply statements. When she encodes her work, we decode it, but the only way she would want us to is in agreement. If our own perceptions find a component of her argument that exposes this process and her own unavoidable bias and agenda, we will continue to find difficulty agreeing.
Whew... very tired after reading this thread. Lots of strong opinions which makes me too scared to add any cents of mine, so I won't :P
All I can say is from my personal experience growing up with an INCREDIBLY smart / loving / busting-ass mother (at times it was just my mom, sister (who is also an amazingly strong and talented person) and I) I've grown up my entire life believing in equality, and find myself always uncomfortable when others treat people differently (both male and female).
I've seen first hand (from an industry perspective) that women are viewed differently then men and it sucks, but I've also seen first hand how a lot of these women are kicking ass much more then us manly men... The most important thing for me is knowing what I believe in, and try my hardest to at least let others know that equality is incredibly important to me.
Anywho, I'm gonna take a nap, 11 pages of reading strong opinionated posts has made me sleepy. :poly142:
While you're correct that we shouldn't be painting someone with by a few words we disagree with it is almost impossible to avoid. What she says are arguments, not simply statements. When she encodes her work, we decode it, but the only way she would want us to is in agreement. If our own perceptions find a component of her argument that exposes this process and her own unavoidable bias and agenda, we will continue to find difficulty agreeing.
Ideally she'd like viewers to agree with her, absolutely, and I don't find the idea so unreasonable. The bias and agenda you mentioned basically boil down to 'include more thoughtful lady characters', which I would've thought most everyone could find some value in, or agree with in some capacity.
There Definitely needs to be more women in the industry, mainly from getting more females interested in game development and games overall.
A scary environment full of men and the atmosphere it creates is one part, but the bigger part is the complete lack of interest, which is not a blame females, but just how it is.
I know one answer is "hire more women over men" but it isn't that simple, we're an industry of talent over age and gender, we simply don't have enough of a sample group to make the entire industry consistantly equal without things falling down.
There Definitely needs to be more women in the industry, mainly from getting more females interested in game development and games overall.
A scary environment full of men and the atmosphere it creates is one part, but the bigger part is the complete lack of interest, which is not a blame females, but just how it is.
How can you say that for sure without more research? Isn't it possible (and I'm not claiming it is for sure, but just follow the thought experiment) that it really is "big scary environment full of men" that dissuades women at every step?
Plenty of polycounters said that their love of games and wanting to work in them started with playing quake and other multiplayer games. Even today, these atmospheres are still hostile toward women, using rape jokes, insulting women if a girl voice comes on, sandwich jokes etc.
Next you have the actual schools. I can't make any industry wide proclamations, but at least at my college, there was only 1, sometimes 2 women per class, and guys were either hostile, or overly creepy in how they interacted with them.
The idea that "girls just aren't interested" I think is barking up the wrong tree. I think first we should focus on a more inclusive gaming industry, from the very beginnings when a girl/boy would first get interested in games by having the actual themes and characters in the games be more egalitarian (Anita's whole point of the videos) to equal treatment of women in schools, and hiring (and wages), and working with. Maybe if we get to that point of equality and women still aren't showing up in equal numbers we can proclaim some kind of gender based disinterest, but as we are nowhere near controlling for the hostile factors, I think it's a bit early to jump to that as a major (or even minor) factor.
I know one answer is "hire more women over men" but it isn't that simple, we're an industry of talent over age and gender, we simply don't have enough of a sample group to make the entire industry consistantly equal without things falling down.
To imply every single hire is based purely on who is the most skilled applicant is incorrect. There are still plenty of nepotist hires that totally bypass skill.
Also, while it's a bit of a derail, it's only in today's market that companies can demand that every new hire come on fully trained. For centuries it has been the company's job to provide some level of on-the-job training. There could very easily be a requirement to hire 50% women, find the best ones that do apply, and nurture the talent. Game art would not fall behind 10 years in quality, and plenty of arguments could be made that it would rapidly improve at least thematically from the wider pool of life experience now present.
How can you say that for sure without more research? Isn't it possible (and I'm not claiming it is for sure, but just follow the thought experiment) that it really is "big scary environment full of men" that dissuades women at every step?
Plenty of polycounters said that their love of games and wanting to work in them started with playing quake and other multiplayer games. Even today, these atmospheres are still hostile toward women, using rape jokes, insulting women if a girl voice comes on, sandwich jokes etc.
Next you have the actual schools. I can't make any industry wide proclamations, but at least at my college, there was only 1, sometimes 2 women per class, and guys were either hostile, or overly creepy in how they interacted with them.
There you have it, that's what I meant with a big scary environment full of men, having one usually ends up creating one of those multiplayer scenarios.¨
I would even dare say the equalent can happen if you have a female-dominant place of work or environment and a single man pops up, these scenarios are highly rare, but displays the mob/group power.
Here in sweden the schools are (from what I've heard) proper when it comes to game-related schools, and I knew a mix of males and just a tiny few females from them.
The idea that "girls just aren't interested" I think is barking up the wrong tree. I think first we should focus on a more inclusive gaming industry, from the very beginnings when a girl/boy would first get interested in games by having the actual themes and characters in the games be more egalitarian (Anita's whole point of the videos) to equal treatment of women in schools, and hiring (and wages), and working with. Maybe if we get to that point of equality and women still aren't showing up in equal numbers we can proclaim some kind of gender based disinterest, but as we are nowhere near controlling for the hostile factors, I think it's a bit early to jump to that as a major (or even minor) factor.
I've never implied that girls are genetically uninterested, I've claimed that statistically women are currently uninterested in games-development, even many of those that do play games.
There is a WAY smaller group to sample your workforce from, and since the act of hiring is USUALLY and HOPEFULLY blind, we'll get an equal disproportionate amount of workers completely relative to the amount of females and males in the industry.
I know a ton of places are dying to get more females in, but there's just so few that do apply, and when they do they'll follow the same percentage of pro/noob as males do, very few get in.
To imply every single hire is based purely on who is the most skilled applicant is incorrect. There are still plenty of nepotist hires that totally bypass skill.
Also, while it's a bit of a derail, it's only in today's market that companies can demand that every new hire come on fully trained. For centuries it has been the company's job to provide some level of on-the-job training. There could very easily be a requirement to hire 50% women, find the best ones that do apply, and nurture the talent. Game art would not fall behind 10 years in quality, and plenty of arguments could be made that it would rapidly improve at least thematically from the wider pool of life experience now present.
But hiring 50% women out of a group of women that is WAY smaller than the male group results in having to hire less than stellar workers, it'll end up hurting the company.
The problems leading to so few women being involved in game development are deeply rooted in how society itself views games both as a pastime and an industry. The mainstream opinion is still that gaming is the preserve of teenage boys and machismo-filled shooter games, even despite the huge successes of games like the Sims and Farmville which are very popular amongst women.
Growing up, I was considered a bit strange for liking games past the age of about thirteen or so, when all my classmates suddenly became much more interested in boys and makeup and clothes. Now I like those things too... but I liked games more, which is still viewed as a weird and un-girl-like thing, and ends up ostracising one from the teenage norm. This happens to a lesser extent to boys, but when the biggest budget shootiest explosion-filled games are the ones that pull in the marketing money and decorate every bus and billboard in town, it becomes more acceptable to be a male gamer.
Female game developers are rare because female gamers are marginalised and ostracised, and even when we do somehow end up in games development there are many times when you end up with your face firmly embedded in your palm wondering why you even bothered when the industry still doesn't seem to give a toss about you - lollipop chainsaw, that stupid hitman trailer, every giant-tittied eyecandy female game character, it's all rather insulting and demoralising...
I backed this Kickstarter project because I think what Anita is doing is great, she's bringing more visibility to these issues and hopefully her videos will form a valuable reference for developers on what NOT to do with their games. It's sparking a lot of debate too, which hopefully will lead to people being educated a bit about things they never considered before.
even despite the huge successes of games like the Sims and Farmville which are very popular amongst women.
Weirdly enough, I love the sims, I really never saw the point of it being a female-dominated series, but maybe it made a big enough boom to make people realize that games can be whatever they make it.
Dwarf fortress is very similar to the sims in many ways, yet that game will be forever male-dominated.
Farmville is another one of those weird realities where tons of people found a game when they could've been playing animal crossing or harvest moon ages ago, but somehow farmville is for them while those others are not.
but when the biggest budget shootiest explosion-filled games are the ones that pull in the marketing money and decorate every bus and billboard in town, it becomes more acceptable to be a male gamer.
.
True, but these games shouldn't in any way be just for the male audience, there's no breasts in modern warfare, a lot of females still play these games, the only problematic area is the online and PLAYERBASE. Still, again, this falls in the misnomer that these games are only for men. People are fast to look at the surface and forget about the actual gameplay.
It is a social problem too, gaming is still not a socially acceptable thing in a scenario where popularity and looks are important, this scares females away, and we can't say that that is a lie, it was exactly the same 20 years ago even as a male.
You would be laughed out by the same type of college-boys that are playing console games today, the nerd-factor is very high amongst females.
and even when we do somehow end up in games development there are many times when you end up with your face firmly embedded in your palm wondering why you even bothered when the industry still doesn't seem to give a toss about you - lollipop chainsaw, that stupid hitman trailer, every giant-tittied eyecandy female game character, it's all rather insulting and demoralising...
It is, but it shouldn't be the defining part of our industry, especially when we got all those games that don't go there, like mass effect series, world of warcraft, elderscrolls, fallout, halo, and super big hits like the sims.
And on top of that we should not bunch those together with other giant tittied eyecandy females that do hit home with females, such as something like the female cast of the guilty gear series or the women of odin sphere.
The problem lies with the people that let the negative atomspheres and treatment happen, characters are sometimes just characters, and even characters like cortana which will essentially just be a voice in your head will be targeted for being fap-material when gamers made her that.
Cortana rescued masterchief, masterchief rescued cortana, together they saved humanity, no amount of titties placed on her body can change that.
lollipop chainsaw, that stupid hitman trailer, every giant-tittied eyecandy female game character, it's all rather insulting and demoralising...
Now you see this is one of the attitudes I don't understand, and I'm fully willing to admit it is probably because I am a male. While I'm in full agreement that games as a whole do rarely genuinely show realistic female characters, I feel like every game and male that enjoys it gets tarred with the same brush.
These days when I look at most games the female representation tends to be in 3 main categories (authentic, independent, and ridiculous) with different levels of prevalence:
authentic and prevalent - these are the ones to be praised as their women are deep, realistic and well though out characters with plenty of them to know and male characters interact with them realistically
authentic and less prevalent - these make up most of our go-to examples, they are noticeable as the only or few female characters that impress with their authenticity eg. Alyx from HL2
authentic and not prevalent - this is where there are practically no female characters due to diegetic reasoning or technical reasoning eg. multiplayer war and army games where real-life armies have less female representation as well as the technical hurdle of requiring twice the character models and animation sets for players to use.
independent and prevalent - here is where a lot of the games where the sole player character is female. The character is rarely an authentic woman, usually unrealistically proportioned or acting uncharacteristically male. However these roles almost always star powerful independent women being the hero, showing confidence and great skill.
independent and less prevalent - poor but 'strong' or 'cool' assisting characters to the main protagonist.
independent and not prevalent - doesn't really sound like a category but would cover any game with a completely neutral stance due to no mention of women or how they would fit into the game.
(this is where it gets tricky as the next category is where most of the complaints come from and even I believe they still have their place.)
ridiculous and prevalent - the women in these games are clearly walking breasts, unrealistically beautiful, no attempts to cover up who they're aimed at. They're shallow and would subtract almost all seriousness from any attempts at it. eg. Dead or Alive, Hyperdimension Neptunia
ridiculous and less prevalent - either sole main female characters that are purely basic, or sidelined background women just to remind the player that they exist.
ridiculous and not prevalent - there is simply no female representation and it's kind of clear the developers just didn't think or care about it.
Now here's where I'm probably going to get disagrees. I think authentic, and independent categories are acceptable, and both are becoming more common no matter how much doom is spread. Also I think ridiculous can be acceptable within diegetic reasoning. As in the fictional universe of the game is so much a fantasy and ridiculous in itself that stupid female or male characters practically fit in.
My other point is that these styles were completely obvious and spread across a completely random sample, I didn't find a heavy weight towards any type and was pleasantly surprise by the amount of developers attempting to make worthwhile authentic female characters. It's changing, slowly, but it is.
Lastly I can't feel good about people bashing obviously ridiculous games like Lollipop Chainsaw. It's a glitzy poppy zombie masher that's intentionally playing to stereotypes, in this case dumb blonde cheerleaders. They're not accidentally making her that way out of ignoance, or trying to create a Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And yes that Hitman trailer is stupid, and I agree it is uncharacteristic of Hitman games to have such schlock. But at the same time is it just too much to imagine in a fictional world a crazy hit-squad of women who think they're way sexy and enjoy dressing up as mockeries of chastity to kill men with style? I know what kind of interpellation and encoding goes into this and agree that it doesn't help women enjoy the prospect of entering the industry, but I also don't like the idea that if somebody wants to make a dumb story they should think again because somebody might not read it as a dumb story.
It becomes hard to agree with the clearly righteous side of the argument (those for women equality) when a great deal of the arguments presented are not "lets add more great female characters" but instead "lets remove all the shit female characters."
Lastly I can't feel good about people bashing obviously ridiculous games like Lollipop Chainsaw. It's a glitzy poppy zombie masher that's intentionally playing to stereotypes...
It becomes hard to agree with the clearly righteous side of the argument (those for women equality) when a great deal of the arguments presented are not "lets add more great female characters" but instead "lets remove all the shit female characters."
Lollipop Chainsaw, alone and as a single piece of work, is totally intentional, and I have absolutely no problem with devs embracing purposeful cheesecake. I textured a smokin' bikini just last month. The problem shows up when it's put in the context of games on the whole, and to this point the medium hasn't really done the best job of depicting women or girl characters.
Alyx Vance and Elena Fisher are great, and Jade was awesome, but even with Alyx and Elena, they were unplayable side characters, and Beyond Good and Evil is almost ten years old now.
I don't think it's righteous to want to play a character you can relate to in some way, who's not then included in weird sexually violent scenes or made to strip to find out information. Heavy Rain I'm looking at y'all.
I don't think it's righteous to want to play a character you can relate to in some way, who's not then included in weird sexually violent scenes or made to strip to find out information.
That's a very valid point and I think I can understand the feeling. However there's is something else I would like to point out, from my personal perspective as a male gamer : I don't think there is a *single* game character out there that I personally relate to simply because it is male, or because this given character looks a certain way. I do not relate more to Drake than to Lara just because he has a penis and no boobs ... However I would tend to play as Lara more, simply because I like the gameplay of Tomb Raider more than the one of Uncharted.
I tend to think that in the world of games, gameplay is the key to suspension of disbelief. The look or gender of the avatar really has little impact.... I do not look like a red-haired demon, yet I *am* Akuma when I play as him ; and I am not a hot asian girl in capri pants yet I *am* Faith when I play Mirror's Edge.
I guess I am just saying that picking a game over another just because the protagonist is male or female would just mean that gameplay takes the backseat in the gamer's decision. Now I am sure that some projects are based on demographic studies (gamers are mostly guys, so lets make a game for guys, it's bound to sell well!! Yay easy money!) but these are usually bound to be crappy products and not worth our attention.
If a female gamer enjoys the feel of twitch competitive FPSes, I certainly hope that she won't avoid playing Call Of Duty simple because the avatars holding the "virtual paintball guns" are male... Missing on a great game because of a gender issue would be a shame, I think.
Now the irony is that I could imagine how some groups could very likely complain if there was even the option of playing as a woman in CoD, because it would be degrading or something like that
Anyways - regardless of male or female characters, I suppose I just want good games...
I totally agree with you about pointless violence and sexually violent scenes. I think I am offended by them just as much as everyone else here. Unfortunately "shock factor" seems to be selling... I didn't play Heavy Rain long enough to find these parts because I didn't buy it ... since the demo was enough to convince me it was a shitty game not worth playing anyways
I could not sleep for an hour after my last post because this issue was still rattling in my head.
I don't think it's righteous to want to play a character you can relate to in some way, who's not then included in weird sexually violent scenes or made to strip to find out information. Heavy Rain I'm looking at y'all.
Of course it's not overly righteous and I was not using that word to debase the argument, I know the ladies side of this discussion are completely sincere. I realised after my last post what you said before you said it, that you want the equivalency. Many women gamers have told me they feel games are "for men" when either a) so what? then that's the target audience, or b) like the developers knew better, they're men and they just made a game for everyone. And so if a girl doesn't like Bayonetta, the issue isn't so much that she doesn't like it because it's "for men" but because she wants to like the game but doesn't because of its image.
Of course in this example I would point out Devil May Cry, but that's beyond the point. So really to be sure putting in 'relate able' characters will fix this? I gotta say as a man, as much as I enjoy games like Bayonetta, Tomb Raider, Gears of War etc. I don't relate to any of them.
But what confuses me so much, and god damn I want to learn, is that I don't know any better than probably any other guy what is appropriate. I haven't played Heavy Rain but I do want to just to see what kinds of narrative it can deliver. But my concern is at what point is a weirdly sexual scene or a stripping for information scene appropriate? When does the story or the diegetic universe allow it? Or even better is when is it not allowed? How much can we do without insulting all women, some women, or a woman?
Lollipop Chainsaw may be a horrible reminder in the current climate, but I struggle to even imagine it existing in a world where developers are afraid of spurning the women vote.
Men are dumb. In the same way women are dumb: to each other. The closest we will ever get to understanding women is when you tell us. Which has led to discussions like this, and why for so many of us the only solution we can bring is "get more women in games." As we don't know what/who you want to see and play as, or how big their boobs are allowed to be or how beautiful or smart they can be.
Where is the line that we cross so ignorantly? What standard of measure is used? It may sound obvious, but is Bayonetta insulting because she has an outfit made of hair or because she runs in high-heels? Is Samus a good female character because she looks like a genderless robot for most of the game, or terrible because she is surprisingly revealed as a beautiful woman in the same terrible trope as "a female ninja! no way!" No to mention that so many of the complaints are towards Japanese games where their culture and perspective of women is so different, and they are definitely not listening to this conversation.
Also not helping women here is the fact that while I'd still say the industry is moving towards a women embracing environment, gamers are sadly moving at an even slower pace. This is clearly not just happening because of games terrible outward image, but the same society that ostracises, criticises and pays women less.
(oh and please please never forget that so many of the kids on xbox live don't actually know how to interact with women in the first place)
Where is the line that we cross so ignorantly? What standard of measure is used?
You could go a number of places online and find lists of characters handled poorly, but I've always been a fan of seeing what's worked, too. I can't, and would never try to speak for everyone, but the following are characters* that me and my friends found to be a refreshing change of scenery. It might give some insight as to where that line lies.
Bonnie MacFarlane (Red Dead): Has personality in spades, was likeable, witty, and far from generic. It was unfortunate that one quest had you saving her from some (implied) pretty terrible shit, however. Abigail is also amazing. More Abigails, please.
Chel (Portal): Though admittedly you don't learn much about her, she's pretty important. The character didn't need to be a lady, but for Valve to go in that direction it created some dynamics that you don't often see in games, like female enemies with beefs not centred around a romantic lead, or friendship. Female friendship is a pretty rare thing in Western AAA games that I've seen.
Chloe Frazer (Uncharted): A really good example of a character who's a total fox, while still being a person first. She gets jealous, acts selfishly, and has her own motivations. Elena Fisher is also fantastic. I can't say enough good things about those two. Also butts. Pretty on board with nice bums.
There's also Tali from Mass Effect, Trip from Enslaved, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, Alyx V., and I've heard good things about Faith from Mirror's Edge, but haven't played it just yet. People with unique personalities first.
But yeah, I just want good games too. Having ladies forever associated with Farmville is something I can't abide by. Not when there's so many good, beautifully crafted games out there.
*It should be noted that most of these characters are NPCs, which is kind of a shame, but I'm hoping the future might have a few more playable types.
relatedly, i just finished max payne 3, and: gross misogynistic approach to women everywhere, including awkwardly sexualized beaten women and female murder victims. yuck!
that's a brilliant list of examples and yes these are the authentic characters that we can only hope will be more popular. Of course I just want to demonstrate a theoretical minefield developers have when trying to build to this bar.
I haven't played Uncharted 2 nor Red Dead 2 so I don't know how these characters work apart from what you said.
Chell is good, but she's silent. This may be typical of Valve but I could also read this as a woman whose words don't need to be heard. She's a test subject, implying the worth of women for ethical position but corporations. In Portal 2 she has stripped off the top of her jumpsuit, showing a sexy but modest singlet, but why? Are they trying to appeal to that animal man brain again?
Tali wears a mask, she's an alien after all, nice to see she has a fine body! Trip forces a man into subjugation, and needs constant protection. Jade wears green lipstick for no apparent reason.
Personally I have almost nothing to say about Faith from Mirrors Edge as she's both a good female character and a good Asian character to boot.
That's clearly hyperbole and looking too much into it, but this is exactly the kind of hair-pulling thoughts that a man might be going through in order to avoid women's scorn. Most would say no men or women are so dumb, but by golly I'd say they are.
If I invented something like Bayonetta, or Lollipop Chainsaw today and showed it to you for the first time, not for approval or to find out if I've made a good game for women, simply what would you think? How much respect do I gain or lose for just making something that I think is cool? Would you be able to appreciate it as art or deny it for its symbolism?
I gotta say, this fascinates me so not just because I don't 'get' women but because in my life I can't fault most characters in any medium. It is an effort (that gets easier day by day) to force my brain to be critical of what I experience, otherwise it switches off and accepts the universe and story wholeheartedly. I practically can't 'hate' characters, if you've ever hated a character for being stupid, insipid or just poorly made, I might not notice, because that terrible character makes complete sense to me in the fictional world; as if the character was born and not written that way.
Chell is good, but she's silent. This may be typical of Valve but I could also read this as a woman whose words don't need to be heard. She's a test subject, implying the worth of women for ethical position but corporations. In Portal 2 she has stripped off the top of her jumpsuit, showing a sexy but modest singlet, but why? Are they trying to appeal to that animal man brain again?
Chell is somewhat more sexxed up for portal 2, and yet again wakes up with makeup on (Most young males will see makeup as something women are born with), she does reach a more classical finely tuned version of sexying up, focus on face, neck and waist. But yes, it would be a lie to say it doesn't appeal to males, but not to forget that a good looking heroine appeals to females too, much like a good looking male one does to males.
Chell is the woman women wants to be, and the woman men wants to have.
The character doesn't win the argument because she isn't sexy, but because she does it right, other than that she's as neutral as gordon freeman, she isn't much of a character at all.
relatedly, i just finished max payne 3, and: gross misogynistic approach to women everywhere, including awkwardly sexualized beaten women and female murder victims. yuck!
I think we need to differentiate stuff that glorify the violence and games that just want to be realisticly grim, which again, he has his wife murdered for the sake of narration in the first one. And the third one takes place in some really shitty places.
It never glorifies the violence against women.
Sarkeesian could have a field-day on max payne.
Abusing the woman for the sake of improving max payne, or tapping into our primal fear of losing our family?
The character doesn't win the argument because she isn't sexy, but because she does it right, other than that she's as neutral as gordon freeman, she isn't much of a character at all.
But that's what I'm flipping out on: right and wrong. She's done 'right' when I'm pretty sure this is just about what people like and don't like.
Especially when as you've correctly pointed out, that good looking females appeal to women too, but I'm given the impression by many women that they all want different things, and when I want them to clarify the response is "I just want it done right"
Which is why: the right way to fix things is as being a male when you see shit going on, don't let it happen, make yourself heard.
We should live in an equal enough world that we can BOTH have the characters AND an equal environment.
I'll did the PETA-reference back in the thread some time ago, but I'll do it again:
Pissing off people is not the way to win people over, it hasn't worked for pro-animal groups such as peta, and it'll not work for feminists either, and believe me, I'm both vegeterian and for equal rights, I've been with this long enough to see that people get more and more hateful towards these things.
Yup, exactly! I think everyone truly wants "good stuff" - not necessarily "strong realistic male" or "strong realistic female". The only thing worth pointing at is the sometimes awful writing seen in some movies and some games ; but games and movies as a whole are not to blame.
I finally watched the series in one go as opposed to the bits and pieces that my limited time due to work allowed.
So far, I can agree with most of her points, others have me role eyes in pointing out the obvious. I look forward to the video game episodes, and will see what else will follow.
As for sexism... my response is that I want convincing characters, regardless of gender. But at the same time, I argue artists are free to make characters however the hell they want, but also have to understand whether or not it's a convincing character that fits within the context.
The problem is that reading context doesn't always work, and so we'll have varying opinions in these matters.
Which is why: the right way to fix things is as being a male when you see shit going on, don't let it happen, make yourself heard.
We should live in an equal enough world that we can BOTH have the characters AND an equal environment.
Of course! I'm not at all excusing situations where a gender is disparaged and prejudiced. I simply trying to distance actual sexist behaviour from perceived sexist behaviour. The two are definitely related but I feel you can't use the same methods to correct them. It's just what I believe, you should 'tut tut' the dumbasses in a multiplayer match but you shouldn't 'tut tut' a guy who draws boobs for fun.
relatedly, i just finished max payne 3, and: gross misogynistic approach to women everywhere, including awkwardly sexualized beaten women and female murder victims. yuck!
I promised myself that I wouldn't post in the this thread, but I really feel quite strongly that Max Payne handled my country of origin quite well actually.
The Brazilian crime really is like that. They showed brothels which do exist, and showed moron rich men and women which are kinda like that too. Some things were obviously hollywooded up, but essentially its kinda accurate dude.
Also;
Seems like everybody continually uses eastern games as reference to sexism in games. Not so much western ones. Maybe the issue is more of a Eastern game thing that people care to admit.
did we play the aame game? im thinkin of thr one where we spend 4 hour chasing a whimpering, mud stained woman with no redeeming qualities, except her tits (which the which we take close looks at as shes beaten) and which otherwise presents women as faceless plot points (see: panama, pregnant escort mission). NOT the first two games, which managed to have 4 powerful, interesting women between two games with a total of like... 10 speaking characters.
did we play the aame game? im thinkin of thr one where we spend 4 hour chasing a whimpering, mud stained woman with no redeeming qualities, except her tits (which the which we take close looks at as shes beaten) and which otherwise presents women as faceless plot points (see: panama, pregnant escort mission). NOT the first two games, which managed to have 4 powerful, interesting women between two games with a total of like... 10 speaking characters.
Fabiana was just a female version of her husbands brother. Material and fake. I dont really find it surprising she didnt have any redeemable qualities, almost nobody connected to that family did.
Fabiana's sister however, I felt was a great character. She was depicted as having a public servant job even though her sister always tried to get her to be in her circle. She was scared, but still brave enough to actually try to make an escape (successfully) after being kidnapped.
She even held down a great dialogue about just wanting to have a better, peaceful life (which is EXACTLY the same thing Passo wanted). I felt she had great depth and didnt see her pregnancy as 'sexist'. It made Passo and her bond seem real.
I think the game wasn't sexist especially because even though there was a kidnapped girl in the plot, they showed hundreds of kidnapped men who were harvested for organs. Do you not agree with any of my points?
Yeah I do kinda disagree with all those points. They're sortof subjective, but basically, the game made me cringe and feel kindof embarrassed a LOT. Mostly from creepy side boob shots of rape victim abused fabiana, which were CONSTANT.
Fabiana was a female version of her husbands brother, yeah, but there are loaded implications to her being a poor woman, a trophy wife, and then this vapid rich fake broad. He repeatedly refers to her as a trophy, calls her lifestyle empty, mocks her rise from poverty as something given to her, not earned: this is a derogatory stereotype of women.
I get that max is cynical in this game, and a lot of his negativity is character writing, but the way he describes her just rubs me the wrong way.
The cokehead brother is a good comparison, but he demonstrates a key difference: if max had spent all his time implying that the brother was a lazy drug addict because he was Hispanic, i wouldve thought 'hey, max is a racist, fuck this guy.' And so when he spent his time implying the woman was just an empty, vapid trophy wife, I thought: 'hey, max is a sexist, fuck this guy.'
There are, of course, real life women who match the stereotype: vapid pleasure seekers who succeed purely because they're attractive... But if one of your only two female characters fits that negative stereotype perfectly, it's pretty damn sexist.
Racial stereotypes also occur in real life, but if 50% of the black characters in a game were eating watermelon and jacking cars i would think that game was pretty racist.
Fabianas sister was okay, but she was portrayed as scared, vulnerable, and dumb through most of the game. She joined the semi-villainous, cokehead brother in terms of decision making, and the whole game made it clear he was a moron. Maybe not a particularly sexist portrayal overall, but definitely not enough to counter Fabiana.
As far as meaningful story characters, like, people who actually drove the plot forawrd, max spent 100% of the time protecting or chasing women until the last two levels. Yeah, there were vulnerable men too, but they were set dressing.
I wanna clarify that i definitely dont think max payne 3 is the most offensive game ever or anything -- the portrayal of fabiyana (and breifly, daphnie or whatever her name was in panama) as a vapid thrill seeking sexual object who can only scream, be eyed, or be protected, Just grossed me out. I can't see a single good reason to write a character like that when you could write a powerful one instead.
Especially after max payne 1/2 (mona was fucking cool. And so were the chick villains from both games)
Okay sure, I think we can agree then that a lot of it is perspective and subjective. I'm glad we can agree on that.
But I think a lot of comes down to the fact that you wanted a deep, like-able, independent, self respecting, smart character that was female. Which has made you kind of miss the point that everybody around Payne isn't ANY of those things. Not even Max. All of them are either fake or corrupt with the sub-exception of Fabiana's sister and Passo's.
I guess a lot of it is arguable; and I respect that you had enough pride to pull back a lot of your original argument. I do however feel like a lot of sexist hysteria points like 'why does the woman have to be kidnapped and seen as a victim the whole story', are a bit of a unnecessary. When in fact a super independent woman in the place of Fabiana just wouldn't have worked for the story, and in Brazil if you're a beautiful woman you're much much much more likely to get kidnapped than a man.
--
I hope you realise I definitely respect You and that sexism is an issue in gaming. I just feel that there is a lot of 'feminist guilt' and sexism hysteria. When in fact western games are doing a great job of moving in the right direction with sexual equality. Only problem is that some of them are expecting a vacuum of sexual expression and social hetero-normative roles, which can really screw up a narrative.
We can agree to disagree -- parting words: I dont think it's an issue of guilt, i think it's an issue of awareness. Mp3 isnt terrible media because it's a little bit (maybe a lot) sexist, but denying it doesnt help either. ALL of the women who speak in the game are weak characters, and over half of them are negative stereotypes... That's pretty bad!
@KateC
If I invented something like Bayonetta, or Lollipop Chainsaw today and showed it to you for the first time, not for approval or to find out if I've made a good game for women, simply what would you think? How much respect do I gain or lose for just making something that I think is cool? Would you be able to appreciate it as art or deny it for its symbolism?
From a purely personal point of view? Bayonetta I'm on board with. She's designed to be sexy, but it's done in a way that's strangely creative and unique. She shoots out of her feet and turns into a giant hair boot, which is not a combination of words I ever thought I'd write. Plus it fits the context of that game world - everything else is just as over the top.
Lollipop Chainsaw, with apologies to anyone on PC who might've worked on it, looks like it combined two often used elements in games (pinups and zombies), and didn't do anything interesting with them. It's not for me, and I feel like the people marketing it would probably be just fine with my saying that. I'm able to appreciate the art assets that went into it, but the vast majority of my friends will probably just ignore it in favour of something less alienating.
We can agree to disagree -- parting words: I dont think it's an issue of guilt, i think it's an issue of awareness. Mp3 isnt terrible media because it's a little bit (maybe a lot) sexist, but denying it doesnt help either. ALL of the women who speak in the game are weak characters, and over half of them are negative stereotypes... That's pretty bad!
Why not? It worked for max payne 2.
I feel it Would have seemed contrived to have every single person in the Branco family be scumbag/unmoral/weak person except for the main boss's wife.
There's really only four women I remember in the game as having dialogue; Fabiana, her sister, jersey girl at the bar (who sticks up for herself against the jersey shore guys), and the uber rich old woman on the marcelo's yacht. I think out of all of them, I could only see one of them as being perceived as 'a sexist stereotype' and I still feel that her 'stereotype' was justified as a real world character.
I really thinks its the opposite. Bayonettas not sexist, I really dont think -- maybe not the most intelligent representation of women, but a powerful, intelligent woman, a good mother, and an independent thinker doesnt become a sexist symbol just because she likes spandex.
Whereas western games have a lot of subversive, damaging representations of women as weaker/shallower than men.
Last bit about max payne 3! Touche about the drunk chick, she was handled fine.
I always interpreted Bayonetta, with her bizarre proportions and dominatrix trappings, as a kind of parody of the typical pandering video game character design. I'm hardly qualified to say what is and isn't offensive towards women though.
Whereas western games have a lot of subversive, damaging representations of women as weaker/shallower than men.
The western content does tend to be a little more subtle, but it's still there, yeah. Assassin's Creed is a series I love, but the early ones do tend to include their fair share of female brothel owners/nuns who were too sexy for their sexy, sexy convents/friend-love interests who end up murdered or threatened with assault. All of which on their own are fine, but taken on the whole it wears a bit thin for people that've been seeing those kind of story angles for awhile. Really awesome to see the new female assassin for the Vita, though.
There are some really good eastern games with females in a lead or main cast that really work well. Final Fantasy 13 and its sequel, silent hill 3, metriod, atelier iris, pokemon, and possibly the Persona series to name a few off the top of my head.
Yes they have some seriously extreme stuff out there, but they are also some gem's in the AAA sphere that I think are pushing female character development in a good direction. (and in the case of persona 4, I believe there was a character development of a young male's sexuality.)
Also I haven' t played it, but I hear mirrors edge also has a great lead female character.
I always interpreted Bayonetta, with her bizarre proportions and dominatrix trappings, as a kind of parody of the typical pandering video game character design. I'm hardly qualified to say what is and isn't offensive towards women though.
A woman designed her outfit... jsut sayin'.
She's a fashion designer, thus the proportions seen in the game.
Not saying women can't design things that are offensive to women, but a lot of people don't realize who actually designed her.
Bayonetta was a character, and that's what I think people need to account for here. I don't think it's a matter of feminism or properly representing the image of a particular gender; I don't think that should really be the focus. It's a matter of making solid and memorable characters.
If the character happens to be an over the top, tongue-in-cheek hypersexual female, that's fine given solid execution and vision. The people who made Bayonetta knew what they were doing and what they were going for, and I think when you play the game that clearly shows.
The reason Japanese games are so often our examples is because their style gives us a front page image of what we're talking about. Their developers are either ignorantly, intentionally, or marketing-wise bringing big boobs to the front, and they do it within their cultural barrier. I can't think of any Japanese Polycounters here who can speak for their attitudes.
It feels like we're picking on them but they're simply the fastest examples. We just had to go through a whole discussion of Max Payne 3 just to even consider if it has sexist qualities. Which is of course worthwhile, as it is the subtle ones that need analysis.
From a purely personal point of view? Bayonetta I'm on board with. She's designed to be sexy, but it's done in a way that's strangely creative and unique. She shoots out of her feet and turns into a giant hair boot, which is not a combination of words I ever thought I'd write. Plus it fits the context of that game world - everything else is just as over the top.
Lollipop Chainsaw, with apologies to anyone on PC who might've worked on it, looks like it combined two often used elements in games (pinups and zombies), and didn't do anything interesting with them. It's not for me, and I feel like the people marketing it would probably be just fine with my saying that. I'm able to appreciate the art assets that went into it, but the vast majority of my friends will probably just ignore it in favour of something less alienating.
Now this is why I like writing and speaking style that sincerely and rationally shows opinion. The reply is surprising to me, no offense but I was totally wondering if I'd get a more negative reply. Of course perhaps (and I'm not trying to typecast you) as a lady with interests in the game art you've probably already gone over the hurdle of "that guy artist is going to show me something with huge boobs."? I probably gave poor examples and truthfully I hate using Bayonetta as one since it is one of my favourite games. But I do because many of the women who I've shown it to have disregarded it as incredulous and even many men have turned away because, and 'get this', they "are too embarrassed."
A woman designed her outfit... jsut sayin'.
She's a fashion designer, thus the proportions seen in the game.
Not saying women can't design things that are offensive to women, but a lot of people don't realize who actually designed her.
Here's a good one from Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (yes it's another Japanese one)
This game may be a ridiculous fantasy involving magic and demons and big swords and a tall buff Spanish man. But the character of Ohatsu Hime a woman with the hots for the lead male is a competent soldier and valued team member known for her sensibilty. She started off in the game as soldier for the empire wearing appropriate armoured uniform but halfway through the "upgrades" to better armour featuring - less coverage and practicality in all sexy zones, and it even features, I kid you not, a cute bunny rabbit tail.
Before you wipe this off a just Japanese changing your look mid-game, a whole scene is dedicated to this, as she is the only character to change at all. All of the characters compliment her good looks, while she clearly states that she is embarrassed by how sexy it is. Even the main man agrees with her in an awkward couples moment. She simply decides to accept it with no reasoning. [edit: actually she does have a reason: to be sexy for the male lead. never mind that we're at war for the fate of Japan, and he gets to wear some of the chunkiest armour in any Onimusha game to date]
There are some really good eastern games with females in a lead or main cast that really work well. Final Fantasy 13 and its sequel, silent hill 3, metriod, atelier iris, pokemon, and possibly the Persona series to name a few off the top of my head.
Yes they have some seriously extreme stuff out there, but they are also some gem's in the AAA sphere that I think are pushing female character development in a good direction. (and in the case of persona 4, I believe there was a character development of a young male's sexuality.)
Also I haven' t played it, but I hear mirrors edge also has a great lead female character.
There's always someone out there who would find these characters troubling or fit them in a trope.
She's a fashion designer, thus the proportions seen in the game.
Not saying women can't design things that are offensive to women, but a lot of people don't realize who actually designed her.
Well that'd account for the loooooong legs. I'm not sure whether having a tiny head is something that's desirable in a fashion model, but I don't pretend to understand the whole haute couture thing.
Mari Shimazaki is a pretty handy reference for interesting costume designs though.
Replies
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines
So indeed - regardless of the cause (please Ben, stop getting this all mixed up, it plays against your whole argument), if feel like there is some dangerous grey area with that kind of model.
Super weird ...
I'm all for realistic and deep female characters within context, but that doesn't mean I want to see the removal of silly unrealistic female characters within context.
Because double-fine can and will utilize all that money just by expanding the project, hence my joke about her hiring someone for special effects.
double-fine originally planned for a quirky minor 2d adventure game, now with all the money they can expand that until the money runs out, and as we know with duke nukem forever it's fully possible to put a shit-ton of money into a game.
Double-fine game and wasteland 2 were very good at describing where the extra money would go, wasteland 2 even went into detail on hiring outside talent and extra ports, and that all extra money would go into making it a bigger development.
Anyways - sorry for the slight derail. Back on track, lets keep talking about boobs! (right ?)
Even if there's something about a particular argument that runs against the grain, I wish more people were willing to discuss some of the issues she's bringing up without dismissing her work entirely. I've seen a fair amount of 'I didn't like the way she spoke about X, so I'm free to write it off wholesale'. Anyone taking that stance is doing themselves a great disservice, not to mention ladies in general.
While you're correct that we shouldn't be painting someone with by a few words we disagree with it is almost impossible to avoid. What she says are arguments, not simply statements. When she encodes her work, we decode it, but the only way she would want us to is in agreement. If our own perceptions find a component of her argument that exposes this process and her own unavoidable bias and agenda, we will continue to find difficulty agreeing.
All I can say is from my personal experience growing up with an INCREDIBLY smart / loving / busting-ass mother (at times it was just my mom, sister (who is also an amazingly strong and talented person) and I) I've grown up my entire life believing in equality, and find myself always uncomfortable when others treat people differently (both male and female).
I've seen first hand (from an industry perspective) that women are viewed differently then men and it sucks, but I've also seen first hand how a lot of these women are kicking ass much more then us manly men... The most important thing for me is knowing what I believe in, and try my hardest to at least let others know that equality is incredibly important to me.
Anywho, I'm gonna take a nap, 11 pages of reading strong opinionated posts has made me sleepy. :poly142:
Ideally she'd like viewers to agree with her, absolutely, and I don't find the idea so unreasonable. The bias and agenda you mentioned basically boil down to 'include more thoughtful lady characters', which I would've thought most everyone could find some value in, or agree with in some capacity.
A scary environment full of men and the atmosphere it creates is one part, but the bigger part is the complete lack of interest, which is not a blame females, but just how it is.
I know one answer is "hire more women over men" but it isn't that simple, we're an industry of talent over age and gender, we simply don't have enough of a sample group to make the entire industry consistantly equal without things falling down.
How can you say that for sure without more research? Isn't it possible (and I'm not claiming it is for sure, but just follow the thought experiment) that it really is "big scary environment full of men" that dissuades women at every step?
Plenty of polycounters said that their love of games and wanting to work in them started with playing quake and other multiplayer games. Even today, these atmospheres are still hostile toward women, using rape jokes, insulting women if a girl voice comes on, sandwich jokes etc.
Next you have the actual schools. I can't make any industry wide proclamations, but at least at my college, there was only 1, sometimes 2 women per class, and guys were either hostile, or overly creepy in how they interacted with them.
The idea that "girls just aren't interested" I think is barking up the wrong tree. I think first we should focus on a more inclusive gaming industry, from the very beginnings when a girl/boy would first get interested in games by having the actual themes and characters in the games be more egalitarian (Anita's whole point of the videos) to equal treatment of women in schools, and hiring (and wages), and working with. Maybe if we get to that point of equality and women still aren't showing up in equal numbers we can proclaim some kind of gender based disinterest, but as we are nowhere near controlling for the hostile factors, I think it's a bit early to jump to that as a major (or even minor) factor.
To imply every single hire is based purely on who is the most skilled applicant is incorrect. There are still plenty of nepotist hires that totally bypass skill.
Also, while it's a bit of a derail, it's only in today's market that companies can demand that every new hire come on fully trained. For centuries it has been the company's job to provide some level of on-the-job training. There could very easily be a requirement to hire 50% women, find the best ones that do apply, and nurture the talent. Game art would not fall behind 10 years in quality, and plenty of arguments could be made that it would rapidly improve at least thematically from the wider pool of life experience now present.
There you have it, that's what I meant with a big scary environment full of men, having one usually ends up creating one of those multiplayer scenarios.¨
I would even dare say the equalent can happen if you have a female-dominant place of work or environment and a single man pops up, these scenarios are highly rare, but displays the mob/group power.
Here in sweden the schools are (from what I've heard) proper when it comes to game-related schools, and I knew a mix of males and just a tiny few females from them.
I've never implied that girls are genetically uninterested, I've claimed that statistically women are currently uninterested in games-development, even many of those that do play games.
There is a WAY smaller group to sample your workforce from, and since the act of hiring is USUALLY and HOPEFULLY blind, we'll get an equal disproportionate amount of workers completely relative to the amount of females and males in the industry.
I know a ton of places are dying to get more females in, but there's just so few that do apply, and when they do they'll follow the same percentage of pro/noob as males do, very few get in.
But hiring 50% women out of a group of women that is WAY smaller than the male group results in having to hire less than stellar workers, it'll end up hurting the company.
That is complete and utter bullshit.
Growing up, I was considered a bit strange for liking games past the age of about thirteen or so, when all my classmates suddenly became much more interested in boys and makeup and clothes. Now I like those things too... but I liked games more, which is still viewed as a weird and un-girl-like thing, and ends up ostracising one from the teenage norm. This happens to a lesser extent to boys, but when the biggest budget shootiest explosion-filled games are the ones that pull in the marketing money and decorate every bus and billboard in town, it becomes more acceptable to be a male gamer.
Female game developers are rare because female gamers are marginalised and ostracised, and even when we do somehow end up in games development there are many times when you end up with your face firmly embedded in your palm wondering why you even bothered when the industry still doesn't seem to give a toss about you - lollipop chainsaw, that stupid hitman trailer, every giant-tittied eyecandy female game character, it's all rather insulting and demoralising...
I backed this Kickstarter project because I think what Anita is doing is great, she's bringing more visibility to these issues and hopefully her videos will form a valuable reference for developers on what NOT to do with their games. It's sparking a lot of debate too, which hopefully will lead to people being educated a bit about things they never considered before.
Weirdly enough, I love the sims, I really never saw the point of it being a female-dominated series, but maybe it made a big enough boom to make people realize that games can be whatever they make it.
Dwarf fortress is very similar to the sims in many ways, yet that game will be forever male-dominated.
Farmville is another one of those weird realities where tons of people found a game when they could've been playing animal crossing or harvest moon ages ago, but somehow farmville is for them while those others are not.
True, but these games shouldn't in any way be just for the male audience, there's no breasts in modern warfare, a lot of females still play these games, the only problematic area is the online and PLAYERBASE. Still, again, this falls in the misnomer that these games are only for men. People are fast to look at the surface and forget about the actual gameplay.
It is a social problem too, gaming is still not a socially acceptable thing in a scenario where popularity and looks are important, this scares females away, and we can't say that that is a lie, it was exactly the same 20 years ago even as a male.
You would be laughed out by the same type of college-boys that are playing console games today, the nerd-factor is very high amongst females.
It is, but it shouldn't be the defining part of our industry, especially when we got all those games that don't go there, like mass effect series, world of warcraft, elderscrolls, fallout, halo, and super big hits like the sims.
And on top of that we should not bunch those together with other giant tittied eyecandy females that do hit home with females, such as something like the female cast of the guilty gear series or the women of odin sphere.
The problem lies with the people that let the negative atomspheres and treatment happen, characters are sometimes just characters, and even characters like cortana which will essentially just be a voice in your head will be targeted for being fap-material when gamers made her that.
Cortana rescued masterchief, masterchief rescued cortana, together they saved humanity, no amount of titties placed on her body can change that.
These days when I look at most games the female representation tends to be in 3 main categories (authentic, independent, and ridiculous) with different levels of prevalence:
authentic and prevalent - these are the ones to be praised as their women are deep, realistic and well though out characters with plenty of them to know and male characters interact with them realistically
authentic and less prevalent - these make up most of our go-to examples, they are noticeable as the only or few female characters that impress with their authenticity eg. Alyx from HL2
authentic and not prevalent - this is where there are practically no female characters due to diegetic reasoning or technical reasoning eg. multiplayer war and army games where real-life armies have less female representation as well as the technical hurdle of requiring twice the character models and animation sets for players to use.
independent and prevalent - here is where a lot of the games where the sole player character is female. The character is rarely an authentic woman, usually unrealistically proportioned or acting uncharacteristically male. However these roles almost always star powerful independent women being the hero, showing confidence and great skill.
independent and less prevalent - poor but 'strong' or 'cool' assisting characters to the main protagonist.
independent and not prevalent - doesn't really sound like a category but would cover any game with a completely neutral stance due to no mention of women or how they would fit into the game.
(this is where it gets tricky as the next category is where most of the complaints come from and even I believe they still have their place.)
ridiculous and prevalent - the women in these games are clearly walking breasts, unrealistically beautiful, no attempts to cover up who they're aimed at. They're shallow and would subtract almost all seriousness from any attempts at it. eg. Dead or Alive, Hyperdimension Neptunia
ridiculous and less prevalent - either sole main female characters that are purely basic, or sidelined background women just to remind the player that they exist.
ridiculous and not prevalent - there is simply no female representation and it's kind of clear the developers just didn't think or care about it.
Now here's where I'm probably going to get disagrees. I think authentic, and independent categories are acceptable, and both are becoming more common no matter how much doom is spread. Also I think ridiculous can be acceptable within diegetic reasoning. As in the fictional universe of the game is so much a fantasy and ridiculous in itself that stupid female or male characters practically fit in.
My other point is that these styles were completely obvious and spread across a completely random sample, I didn't find a heavy weight towards any type and was pleasantly surprise by the amount of developers attempting to make worthwhile authentic female characters. It's changing, slowly, but it is.
Lastly I can't feel good about people bashing obviously ridiculous games like Lollipop Chainsaw. It's a glitzy poppy zombie masher that's intentionally playing to stereotypes, in this case dumb blonde cheerleaders. They're not accidentally making her that way out of ignoance, or trying to create a Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And yes that Hitman trailer is stupid, and I agree it is uncharacteristic of Hitman games to have such schlock. But at the same time is it just too much to imagine in a fictional world a crazy hit-squad of women who think they're way sexy and enjoy dressing up as mockeries of chastity to kill men with style? I know what kind of interpellation and encoding goes into this and agree that it doesn't help women enjoy the prospect of entering the industry, but I also don't like the idea that if somebody wants to make a dumb story they should think again because somebody might not read it as a dumb story.
It becomes hard to agree with the clearly righteous side of the argument (those for women equality) when a great deal of the arguments presented are not "lets add more great female characters" but instead "lets remove all the shit female characters."
Lollipop Chainsaw, alone and as a single piece of work, is totally intentional, and I have absolutely no problem with devs embracing purposeful cheesecake. I textured a smokin' bikini just last month. The problem shows up when it's put in the context of games on the whole, and to this point the medium hasn't really done the best job of depicting women or girl characters.
Alyx Vance and Elena Fisher are great, and Jade was awesome, but even with Alyx and Elena, they were unplayable side characters, and Beyond Good and Evil is almost ten years old now.
I don't think it's righteous to want to play a character you can relate to in some way, who's not then included in weird sexually violent scenes or made to strip to find out information. Heavy Rain I'm looking at y'all.
Edit: Also bendy cat? You're alright in my books.
That's a very valid point and I think I can understand the feeling. However there's is something else I would like to point out, from my personal perspective as a male gamer : I don't think there is a *single* game character out there that I personally relate to simply because it is male, or because this given character looks a certain way. I do not relate more to Drake than to Lara just because he has a penis and no boobs ... However I would tend to play as Lara more, simply because I like the gameplay of Tomb Raider more than the one of Uncharted.
I tend to think that in the world of games, gameplay is the key to suspension of disbelief. The look or gender of the avatar really has little impact.... I do not look like a red-haired demon, yet I *am* Akuma when I play as him ; and I am not a hot asian girl in capri pants yet I *am* Faith when I play Mirror's Edge.
I guess I am just saying that picking a game over another just because the protagonist is male or female would just mean that gameplay takes the backseat in the gamer's decision. Now I am sure that some projects are based on demographic studies (gamers are mostly guys, so lets make a game for guys, it's bound to sell well!! Yay easy money!) but these are usually bound to be crappy products and not worth our attention.
If a female gamer enjoys the feel of twitch competitive FPSes, I certainly hope that she won't avoid playing Call Of Duty simple because the avatars holding the "virtual paintball guns" are male... Missing on a great game because of a gender issue would be a shame, I think.
Now the irony is that I could imagine how some groups could very likely complain if there was even the option of playing as a woman in CoD, because it would be degrading or something like that
Anyways - regardless of male or female characters, I suppose I just want good games...
I totally agree with you about pointless violence and sexually violent scenes. I think I am offended by them just as much as everyone else here. Unfortunately "shock factor" seems to be selling... I didn't play Heavy Rain long enough to find these parts because I didn't buy it ... since the demo was enough to convince me it was a shitty game not worth playing anyways
Of course it's not overly righteous and I was not using that word to debase the argument, I know the ladies side of this discussion are completely sincere. I realised after my last post what you said before you said it, that you want the equivalency. Many women gamers have told me they feel games are "for men" when either a) so what? then that's the target audience, or b) like the developers knew better, they're men and they just made a game for everyone. And so if a girl doesn't like Bayonetta, the issue isn't so much that she doesn't like it because it's "for men" but because she wants to like the game but doesn't because of its image.
Of course in this example I would point out Devil May Cry, but that's beyond the point. So really to be sure putting in 'relate able' characters will fix this? I gotta say as a man, as much as I enjoy games like Bayonetta, Tomb Raider, Gears of War etc. I don't relate to any of them.
But what confuses me so much, and god damn I want to learn, is that I don't know any better than probably any other guy what is appropriate. I haven't played Heavy Rain but I do want to just to see what kinds of narrative it can deliver. But my concern is at what point is a weirdly sexual scene or a stripping for information scene appropriate? When does the story or the diegetic universe allow it? Or even better is when is it not allowed? How much can we do without insulting all women, some women, or a woman?
Lollipop Chainsaw may be a horrible reminder in the current climate, but I struggle to even imagine it existing in a world where developers are afraid of spurning the women vote.
Men are dumb. In the same way women are dumb: to each other. The closest we will ever get to understanding women is when you tell us. Which has led to discussions like this, and why for so many of us the only solution we can bring is "get more women in games." As we don't know what/who you want to see and play as, or how big their boobs are allowed to be or how beautiful or smart they can be.
Where is the line that we cross so ignorantly? What standard of measure is used? It may sound obvious, but is Bayonetta insulting because she has an outfit made of hair or because she runs in high-heels? Is Samus a good female character because she looks like a genderless robot for most of the game, or terrible because she is surprisingly revealed as a beautiful woman in the same terrible trope as "a female ninja! no way!" No to mention that so many of the complaints are towards Japanese games where their culture and perspective of women is so different, and they are definitely not listening to this conversation.
Also not helping women here is the fact that while I'd still say the industry is moving towards a women embracing environment, gamers are sadly moving at an even slower pace. This is clearly not just happening because of games terrible outward image, but the same society that ostracises, criticises and pays women less.
(oh and please please never forget that so many of the kids on xbox live don't actually know how to interact with women in the first place)
You could go a number of places online and find lists of characters handled poorly, but I've always been a fan of seeing what's worked, too. I can't, and would never try to speak for everyone, but the following are characters* that me and my friends found to be a refreshing change of scenery. It might give some insight as to where that line lies.
Bonnie MacFarlane (Red Dead): Has personality in spades, was likeable, witty, and far from generic. It was unfortunate that one quest had you saving her from some (implied) pretty terrible shit, however. Abigail is also amazing. More Abigails, please.
Chel (Portal): Though admittedly you don't learn much about her, she's pretty important. The character didn't need to be a lady, but for Valve to go in that direction it created some dynamics that you don't often see in games, like female enemies with beefs not centred around a romantic lead, or friendship. Female friendship is a pretty rare thing in Western AAA games that I've seen.
Chloe Frazer (Uncharted): A really good example of a character who's a total fox, while still being a person first. She gets jealous, acts selfishly, and has her own motivations. Elena Fisher is also fantastic. I can't say enough good things about those two. Also butts. Pretty on board with nice bums.
There's also Tali from Mass Effect, Trip from Enslaved, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, Alyx V., and I've heard good things about Faith from Mirror's Edge, but haven't played it just yet. People with unique personalities first.
But yeah, I just want good games too. Having ladies forever associated with Farmville is something I can't abide by. Not when there's so many good, beautifully crafted games out there.
*It should be noted that most of these characters are NPCs, which is kind of a shame, but I'm hoping the future might have a few more playable types.
Dead serious, btw.
that's a brilliant list of examples and yes these are the authentic characters that we can only hope will be more popular. Of course I just want to demonstrate a theoretical minefield developers have when trying to build to this bar.
I haven't played Uncharted 2 nor Red Dead 2 so I don't know how these characters work apart from what you said.
Chell is good, but she's silent. This may be typical of Valve but I could also read this as a woman whose words don't need to be heard. She's a test subject, implying the worth of women for ethical position but corporations. In Portal 2 she has stripped off the top of her jumpsuit, showing a sexy but modest singlet, but why? Are they trying to appeal to that animal man brain again?
Tali wears a mask, she's an alien after all, nice to see she has a fine body! Trip forces a man into subjugation, and needs constant protection. Jade wears green lipstick for no apparent reason.
Personally I have almost nothing to say about Faith from Mirrors Edge as she's both a good female character and a good Asian character to boot.
That's clearly hyperbole and looking too much into it, but this is exactly the kind of hair-pulling thoughts that a man might be going through in order to avoid women's scorn. Most would say no men or women are so dumb, but by golly I'd say they are.
If I invented something like Bayonetta, or Lollipop Chainsaw today and showed it to you for the first time, not for approval or to find out if I've made a good game for women, simply what would you think? How much respect do I gain or lose for just making something that I think is cool? Would you be able to appreciate it as art or deny it for its symbolism?
I gotta say, this fascinates me so not just because I don't 'get' women but because in my life I can't fault most characters in any medium. It is an effort (that gets easier day by day) to force my brain to be critical of what I experience, otherwise it switches off and accepts the universe and story wholeheartedly. I practically can't 'hate' characters, if you've ever hated a character for being stupid, insipid or just poorly made, I might not notice, because that terrible character makes complete sense to me in the fictional world; as if the character was born and not written that way.
Chell is somewhat more sexxed up for portal 2, and yet again wakes up with makeup on (Most young males will see makeup as something women are born with), she does reach a more classical finely tuned version of sexying up, focus on face, neck and waist. But yes, it would be a lie to say it doesn't appeal to males, but not to forget that a good looking heroine appeals to females too, much like a good looking male one does to males.
Chell is the woman women wants to be, and the woman men wants to have.
The character doesn't win the argument because she isn't sexy, but because she does it right, other than that she's as neutral as gordon freeman, she isn't much of a character at all.
I think we need to differentiate stuff that glorify the violence and games that just want to be realisticly grim, which again, he has his wife murdered for the sake of narration in the first one. And the third one takes place in some really shitty places.
It never glorifies the violence against women.
Sarkeesian could have a field-day on max payne.
Abusing the woman for the sake of improving max payne, or tapping into our primal fear of losing our family?
But that's what I'm flipping out on: right and wrong. She's done 'right' when I'm pretty sure this is just about what people like and don't like.
Especially when as you've correctly pointed out, that good looking females appeal to women too, but I'm given the impression by many women that they all want different things, and when I want them to clarify the response is "I just want it done right"
We should live in an equal enough world that we can BOTH have the characters AND an equal environment.
I'll did the PETA-reference back in the thread some time ago, but I'll do it again:
Pissing off people is not the way to win people over, it hasn't worked for pro-animal groups such as peta, and it'll not work for feminists either, and believe me, I'm both vegeterian and for equal rights, I've been with this long enough to see that people get more and more hateful towards these things.
Yup, exactly! I think everyone truly wants "good stuff" - not necessarily "strong realistic male" or "strong realistic female". The only thing worth pointing at is the sometimes awful writing seen in some movies and some games ; but games and movies as a whole are not to blame.
So far, I can agree with most of her points, others have me role eyes in pointing out the obvious. I look forward to the video game episodes, and will see what else will follow.
As for sexism... my response is that I want convincing characters, regardless of gender. But at the same time, I argue artists are free to make characters however the hell they want, but also have to understand whether or not it's a convincing character that fits within the context.
The problem is that reading context doesn't always work, and so we'll have varying opinions in these matters.
Of course! I'm not at all excusing situations where a gender is disparaged and prejudiced. I simply trying to distance actual sexist behaviour from perceived sexist behaviour. The two are definitely related but I feel you can't use the same methods to correct them. It's just what I believe, you should 'tut tut' the dumbasses in a multiplayer match but you shouldn't 'tut tut' a guy who draws boobs for fun.
I promised myself that I wouldn't post in the this thread, but I really feel quite strongly that Max Payne handled my country of origin quite well actually.
The Brazilian crime really is like that. They showed brothels which do exist, and showed moron rich men and women which are kinda like that too. Some things were obviously hollywooded up, but essentially its kinda accurate dude.
Also;
Seems like everybody continually uses eastern games as reference to sexism in games. Not so much western ones. Maybe the issue is more of a Eastern game thing that people care to admit.
Fabiana was just a female version of her husbands brother. Material and fake. I dont really find it surprising she didnt have any redeemable qualities, almost nobody connected to that family did.
Fabiana's sister however, I felt was a great character. She was depicted as having a public servant job even though her sister always tried to get her to be in her circle. She was scared, but still brave enough to actually try to make an escape (successfully) after being kidnapped.
She even held down a great dialogue about just wanting to have a better, peaceful life (which is EXACTLY the same thing Passo wanted). I felt she had great depth and didnt see her pregnancy as 'sexist'. It made Passo and her bond seem real.
I think the game wasn't sexist especially because even though there was a kidnapped girl in the plot, they showed hundreds of kidnapped men who were harvested for organs. Do you not agree with any of my points?
Fabiana was a female version of her husbands brother, yeah, but there are loaded implications to her being a poor woman, a trophy wife, and then this vapid rich fake broad. He repeatedly refers to her as a trophy, calls her lifestyle empty, mocks her rise from poverty as something given to her, not earned: this is a derogatory stereotype of women.
I get that max is cynical in this game, and a lot of his negativity is character writing, but the way he describes her just rubs me the wrong way.
The cokehead brother is a good comparison, but he demonstrates a key difference: if max had spent all his time implying that the brother was a lazy drug addict because he was Hispanic, i wouldve thought 'hey, max is a racist, fuck this guy.' And so when he spent his time implying the woman was just an empty, vapid trophy wife, I thought: 'hey, max is a sexist, fuck this guy.'
There are, of course, real life women who match the stereotype: vapid pleasure seekers who succeed purely because they're attractive... But if one of your only two female characters fits that negative stereotype perfectly, it's pretty damn sexist.
Racial stereotypes also occur in real life, but if 50% of the black characters in a game were eating watermelon and jacking cars i would think that game was pretty racist.
Fabianas sister was okay, but she was portrayed as scared, vulnerable, and dumb through most of the game. She joined the semi-villainous, cokehead brother in terms of decision making, and the whole game made it clear he was a moron. Maybe not a particularly sexist portrayal overall, but definitely not enough to counter Fabiana.
As far as meaningful story characters, like, people who actually drove the plot forawrd, max spent 100% of the time protecting or chasing women until the last two levels. Yeah, there were vulnerable men too, but they were set dressing.
I wanna clarify that i definitely dont think max payne 3 is the most offensive game ever or anything -- the portrayal of fabiyana (and breifly, daphnie or whatever her name was in panama) as a vapid thrill seeking sexual object who can only scream, be eyed, or be protected, Just grossed me out. I can't see a single good reason to write a character like that when you could write a powerful one instead.
Especially after max payne 1/2 (mona was fucking cool. And so were the chick villains from both games)
But I think a lot of comes down to the fact that you wanted a deep, like-able, independent, self respecting, smart character that was female. Which has made you kind of miss the point that everybody around Payne isn't ANY of those things. Not even Max. All of them are either fake or corrupt with the sub-exception of Fabiana's sister and Passo's.
I guess a lot of it is arguable; and I respect that you had enough pride to pull back a lot of your original argument. I do however feel like a lot of sexist hysteria points like 'why does the woman have to be kidnapped and seen as a victim the whole story', are a bit of a unnecessary. When in fact a super independent woman in the place of Fabiana just wouldn't have worked for the story, and in Brazil if you're a beautiful woman you're much much much more likely to get kidnapped than a man.
--
I hope you realise I definitely respect You and that sexism is an issue in gaming. I just feel that there is a lot of 'feminist guilt' and sexism hysteria. When in fact western games are doing a great job of moving in the right direction with sexual equality. Only problem is that some of them are expecting a vacuum of sexual expression and social hetero-normative roles, which can really screw up a narrative.
Why not? It worked for max payne 2.
From a purely personal point of view? Bayonetta I'm on board with. She's designed to be sexy, but it's done in a way that's strangely creative and unique. She shoots out of her feet and turns into a giant hair boot, which is not a combination of words I ever thought I'd write. Plus it fits the context of that game world - everything else is just as over the top.
Lollipop Chainsaw, with apologies to anyone on PC who might've worked on it, looks like it combined two often used elements in games (pinups and zombies), and didn't do anything interesting with them. It's not for me, and I feel like the people marketing it would probably be just fine with my saying that. I'm able to appreciate the art assets that went into it, but the vast majority of my friends will probably just ignore it in favour of something less alienating.
I feel it Would have seemed contrived to have every single person in the Branco family be scumbag/unmoral/weak person except for the main boss's wife.
There's really only four women I remember in the game as having dialogue; Fabiana, her sister, jersey girl at the bar (who sticks up for herself against the jersey shore guys), and the uber rich old woman on the marcelo's yacht. I think out of all of them, I could only see one of them as being perceived as 'a sexist stereotype' and I still feel that her 'stereotype' was justified as a real world character.
The examples seem to always fall back to Lollipop Chainsaw, or Bayonetta, or Dead or Alive, or Tekken etc.
Western gaming has really a lot more awareness than its getting credit for. Its not perfect of course but definitely in the right direction.
Whereas western games have a lot of subversive, damaging representations of women as weaker/shallower than men.
Last bit about max payne 3! Touche about the drunk chick, she was handled fine.
The western content does tend to be a little more subtle, but it's still there, yeah. Assassin's Creed is a series I love, but the early ones do tend to include their fair share of female brothel owners/nuns who were too sexy for their sexy, sexy convents/friend-love interests who end up murdered or threatened with assault. All of which on their own are fine, but taken on the whole it wears a bit thin for people that've been seeing those kind of story angles for awhile. Really awesome to see the new female assassin for the Vita, though.
Yes they have some seriously extreme stuff out there, but they are also some gem's in the AAA sphere that I think are pushing female character development in a good direction. (and in the case of persona 4, I believe there was a character development of a young male's sexuality.)
Also I haven' t played it, but I hear mirrors edge also has a great lead female character.
A woman designed her outfit... jsut sayin'.
She's a fashion designer, thus the proportions seen in the game.
Not saying women can't design things that are offensive to women, but a lot of people don't realize who actually designed her.
If the character happens to be an over the top, tongue-in-cheek hypersexual female, that's fine given solid execution and vision. The people who made Bayonetta knew what they were doing and what they were going for, and I think when you play the game that clearly shows.
It feels like we're picking on them but they're simply the fastest examples. We just had to go through a whole discussion of Max Payne 3 just to even consider if it has sexist qualities. Which is of course worthwhile, as it is the subtle ones that need analysis.
Now this is why I like writing and speaking style that sincerely and rationally shows opinion. The reply is surprising to me, no offense but I was totally wondering if I'd get a more negative reply. Of course perhaps (and I'm not trying to typecast you) as a lady with interests in the game art you've probably already gone over the hurdle of "that guy artist is going to show me something with huge boobs."? I probably gave poor examples and truthfully I hate using Bayonetta as one since it is one of my favourite games. But I do because many of the women who I've shown it to have disregarded it as incredulous and even many men have turned away because, and 'get this', they "are too embarrassed."
I tell people this all the time.
This game may be a ridiculous fantasy involving magic and demons and big swords and a tall buff Spanish man. But the character of Ohatsu Hime a woman with the hots for the lead male is a competent soldier and valued team member known for her sensibilty. She started off in the game as soldier for the empire wearing appropriate armoured uniform but halfway through the "upgrades" to better armour featuring - less coverage and practicality in all sexy zones, and it even features, I kid you not, a cute bunny rabbit tail.
Before you wipe this off a just Japanese changing your look mid-game, a whole scene is dedicated to this, as she is the only character to change at all. All of the characters compliment her good looks, while she clearly states that she is embarrassed by how sexy it is. Even the main man agrees with her in an awkward couples moment. She simply decides to accept it with no reasoning. [edit: actually she does have a reason: to be sexy for the male lead. never mind that we're at war for the fate of Japan, and he gets to wear some of the chunkiest armour in any Onimusha game to date]
There's always someone out there who would find these characters troubling or fit them in a trope.
Well that'd account for the loooooong legs. I'm not sure whether having a tiny head is something that's desirable in a fashion model, but I don't pretend to understand the whole haute couture thing.
Mari Shimazaki is a pretty handy reference for interesting costume designs though.
stolen from reddit