Anthem reviews

[Something Amyss]

[So it's hard to see the "Realism" arguement of "No Ladies allowed" here.

It doesn't really help that these discussions are almost literally the only time people care about realism. Half the internet become historical scholars and physicists when the topic of women come up, or black people, but is nowhere to be found most of the time.

 

[Satinavian]

Because last I checked women play all kinds of games all over the spectrum.

Which, again, does not mean women are the target audience for any of them. Women play God of War. Are women the target audience for God of War? Do you really believe that?

It's weird that you keep trying to make a point by making non sequitur arguments which neither support the point or are remotely beneficial except in a "hey, look over here!" context.

Sure, female leads do not always mean female target audience and male leads not always male target audience.

Yet here you are, claiming that "God of War" obviously targets men and that that is widespread and typical and that the multitude of female lead games don't count because they obviously don't target women.

Based on ... what exactly ?


If "God of War" is obviously targeting men, then "Beyond Good and Evil", "Syberia", "Recettear", the "Atelier"-Series, "Remember me" or "Mages of Mystralia" are obviously targetting women.

Actually the kind of lead is quite a huge hint on the target audience as for utterly stupid reasons the game industry believed for a long time that gamers could only really identify with a protagonist that looks like themself.

[So it's hard to see the "Realism" arguement of "No Ladies allowed" here.

It doesn't really help that these discussions are almost literally the only time people care about realism. Half the internet become historical scholars and physicists when the topic of women come up, or black people, but is nowhere to be found most of the time.

People care all the time about realism.

But other people don't care about people arguing about realism when it is not about women or black people. That is why "realism"-discussions about Battlefield 5 produce articles in newspapers and "realism"-discussions about World of Tanks don't. Doesn't mean you don't find tens of thousands of threads about how horrible which tank is represented in the game, how stupid unrealistic the hitpoints and the short distance warfare are or how they should stop putting stuff into the game that didn't even really exist as a blueprint.
But it is not about women, so no one takes notice.

 

[Hawki]

Then what games are targeted towards women?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Barbie_video_games

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I'm trying to understand WTF YOUR point is. Women play CoD and PUBG, and literally everything else. If they play it, then they are the target audience.

Um, no, not really.

Again, look at the Barbie games - this is an extreme example, but while I'm capable of playing any one of those games, I'm hardly the target audience for it. Media can be consumed without being the person the creator has in mind. For instance, I quite like(d) FiM, but I'm under no delusion that I'm the intended age or gender for it.

On the other hand, not every piece of media is going to have an intended target audience. I can buy CoD being targeted towards males for somewhat obvious reasons, but PUBG? Not so much.

Because the Battlefield series has ALWAYS been about taking a more realistic approach to the military shooter (ignoring Hardline).

And 2142

And Bad Company

And Bad Company 2

And Heroes

And...well, I agree with the rule, but there's plenty of exceptions.

As a result, making a female soldier the highlight of the marketing campaign (especially showing off the disabled woman) just didn't make sense to the fan base.

Didn't she just appear in the one trailer?

But other people don't care about people arguing about realism when it is not about women or black people. That is why "realism"-discussions about Battlefield 5 produce articles in newspapers and "realism"-discussions about World of Tanks don't. Doesn't mean you don't find tens of thousands of threads about how horrible which tank is represented in the game, how stupid unrealistic the hitpoints and the short distance warfare are or how they should stop putting stuff into the game that didn't even really exist as a blueprint.
But it is not about women, so no one takes notice.

Has the outcry ever been enough to send a WoT trailer into downvote hell, and send purchases of the game (or microtransactions) plummeting?

Also, does WoT have any actual context to it whatsoever? I mean, I know Dark Horse somehow created a comic series out of it, but I can't imagine any real leg to stand on with "accuracy" in WoT - what you describe above comes off as nitpicking rather than outrage.

 

[Satinavian]

Has the outcry ever been enough to send a WoT trailer into downvote hell, and send purchases of the game (or microtransactions) plummeting?

The trailer was horrible and deserved all downvotes it got. But i am not convinced this BFV sold significantly less because of that controversy. It could just be a bad game in an oversaturated market. But i never really got the appeal of any of the Battlefield games anyway, so who knows.

Also, does WoT have any actual context to it whatsoever? I mean, I know Dark Horse somehow created a comic series out of it, but I can't imagine any real leg to stand on with "accuracy" in WoT - what you describe above comes off as nitpicking rather than outrage.

It is a multiplayer game with two teams of tanks fighting in a arena resembling certain WWII locations. It also has/had modes based on real battles limiting the vehicles allowed to what was present there and enforce sides. Is it really that much different from Battlefield ? (Coincidently WoT also spawned Girls und Panzer which captures the feel and realism of the game rather well.)

 

[CritialGaming]

Then what games are targeted towards women?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Barbie_video_games

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I mean that's a game for kids, little girls specifically. And I would argue that little girls are a completely different audience than a general female audience. So I would say that Barbie is an invalid example. But that's just me.

 

[Casual Shinji]

[So it's hard to see the "Realism" arguement of "No Ladies allowed" here.

It doesn't really help that these discussions are almost literally the only time people care about realism. Half the internet become historical scholars and physicists when the topic of women come up, or black people, but is nowhere to be found most of the time.

They also only ever care about censorship and artistic freedom when their (sometimes underage) boobies get taken away.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yet here you are, claiming that "God of War" obviously targets men and that that is widespread and typical and that the multitude of female lead games don't count because they obviously don't target women.

This "contradiction" only applies if I somewhere said "God of War is clearly targeted at men because of a male lead."

I think if you check the tapes, you'll see I didn't.

I wonder what about these simple statements is so threatening that all the lobsters get their tails up.

I mean that's a game for kids, little girls specifically.

You just spent a ton of time arguing that people didn't have to be the target audience to enjoy something (a point which didn't even disagree with m,e, but whatevevs) and now you're arguing the exact opposite because a point made it convenient to do so.

[

It's the same thing when transphobes are suddenly the experts on trans characters when they show up

"I openly mock and question transgenderism but this character revealed their dead name to the protagonist when asked about their history so it's bad trans representation!"

Or the "this person revealed they're trans immediately! Bad representation!"/"This character hid they were trans until I flirted with them! Bad representation!" catch 22.

They also only ever care about censorship and artistic freedom when their (sometimes underage) boobies get taken away.

It seems like it's usually about underage girls, really. But yeah, it's amazing how people who will so readily silence you will jump to "First they came" over animated breasts.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

... What the hell? I came in to see more about Anthem Reviews? What.. How..?

Eh, I like a good dust up anyway.

So, I'll use this as a time to ask a question that I've always wondered.

What does Nathan Drake being White bring to the Narrative. What aspects of the story could only be told well because he was white? Same thing with the Master Chief. What about being an always armored super soldier in a universe we can't even comprehend dictated his character to be a Caucasian... that was born on another world?

Max Payne is a brooding substance abuser who can't reconcile his life without the drink and murdering a whole city block of people. His whiteness brought what to the story?

Alan Wake is a Novelist. And he's searching for his wife. Is that a story that can only depicted by a white male? No Asian guy can tell that story as well?

With humanity on the brink and the survivors being attacked by zombie fungi people, you need white guy Joel as his whiteness brings... what, more humanity to a story about zombie fungi people somehow?

You know, I'm just going to stop it here. People keep asking what a Diversity Choice brings to the story or the media. I'm asking what does it take away?

And I assure you, whatever answer someone can think up will be probably near the same reason why people question the prevalence of just seeing white people over and over again. As I'm sure it will be some derivative of "There's no reason or necessity to it".

And that's exactly right. And there's no reason or necessity to white men everywhere. We're not even saying replace them all. Just wondering why it seems like every choice of a non-white character needs scrutiny to pass some sort of acceptability test.

... But no, seriously, what happened to Anthem Reviews?

 

[Satinavian]

Yet here you are, claiming that "God of War" obviously targets men and that that is widespread and typical and that the multitude of female lead games don't count because they obviously don't target women.

This "contradiction" only applies if I somewhere said "God of War is clearly targeted at men because of a male lead."

I think if you check the tapes, you'll see I didn't.

And if you check, you will notice, i never wrote you were.

I just pointed out your obnoxious hypocrisy in asserting that "God of War" targets men but not accepting that many of those other games actually do target women. But that games aimed at both genders do exist in significant numbers is something you can't admit, can you ? I didn't even claim that women are targeted as often as men, they aren't. But the industry is certainly not ignoring half their potential customer base and has not done so for decades.

 

[Something Amyss]

And if you check, you will notice, i never wrote you were.

So we agree there's no contradiction.

I just pointed out your obnoxious hypocrisy in asserting that "God of War" targets men but not accepting that many of those other games actually do target women.

Oh, right...you didn't say it,. you just...said it. Kind of funny how it's not a contradiction, yet it's "obnoxious hypocrisy" for a standard that still hinges on assertions I'm not making.

You specified "female lead games don't count," which has a couple of problems. One, it's not true. Female-led games don't automatically count because they have a female lead. Perhaps you just missed that in the discourse you were glomming onto, in which case the best advice I can offer is to pay attention. Thus far the only blowback I've gotten is from two people who appear to have not read what i said very carefully, to the point one ended up making my initial point in an attempt to rebut the point he thought I was making, and one which specifies a point I haven't made.

Yet here you are, claiming that "God of War" obviously targets men and that that is widespread and typical and that the multitude of female lead games don't count because they obviously don't target women.

Here you are, claiming something I didn't say and trying to hold it up as hypocrisy when compared to something else I didn't say.

But even if I had said that no female-lead games counted (which is not the same as what you quoted, where I said it doesn't automatically count...do you think the OneChanbara games are targeting women?) the hypocrisy would have to hinge on me saying something to contradict that. In this case, to make my God of War statement hypocritical, it would kiiiinda have to hinge on the idea that male lead automatically equals male target audience.

But the industry is certainly not ignoring half their potential customer base and has not done so for decades.

And again, a great comeback to a point nobody appears to be making. Since I didn't say women were ignored--merely not the target demographic--this doesn't apply to me,. and since you're going to immediately claim that even though you addressed it to me in the context of this thread you never claimed I said it, can we just chalk this up to you making completely unrelated statements for no real reason, or are you going to continue to try and die on a hill where you get upset over things I didn't say and try and tell me how wrong I am?

 

[Satinavian]

You specified "female lead games don't count," which has a couple of problems. One, it's not true. Female-led games don't automatically count because they have a female lead.

Are you mixing me up with other posters ? I brought up female lead games once. After you stated that you were talking not about leads but of target audience, i agreed that those are not identical and talked about target audience.

Perhaps you just missed that in the discourse you were glomming onto, in which case the best advice I can offer is to pay attention.

That is exactly the advice i wanted to give to you.

But even if I had said that no female-lead games counted (which is not the same as what you quoted, where I said it doesn't automatically count...do you think the OneChanbara games are targeting women?) the hypocrisy would have to hinge on me saying something to contradict that. In this case, to make my God of War statement hypocritical, it would kiiiinda have to hinge on the idea that male lead automatically equals male target audience.

I actually had to google what OneChanbara games are. Yes, they seem to have a male target audience. What has that ro do with all the games that have a female target audience ?

And again, a great comeback to a point nobody appears to be making. Since I didn't say women were ignored--merely not the target demographic--this doesn't apply to me,.

If they are not the target audience of any games, they are ignored. Because that means the games are not made for them as customers. There is no difference between those.



Here, that was the original quote :

Games have very specifically had this sort of relationship with women for a long time. Girls are allowed to come along for the ride on the Kratos power fantasy, but it's very clear you're not the target demo.

Is this not stating that :
a) God of War is targeted at a male audience
and
b) that this is typical for the relationship of games with women in general?

I hold that b) is fundamentally wrong. That is the thing i argued against in all those posts. If you really want to claim i misunderstood you, you should better explain what else the quoted text is supposed to mean.

 

[Xprimentyl]

... People keep asking what a Diversity Choice brings to the story or the media. I'm asking what does it take away?

And there's no reason or necessity to white men everywhere. We're not even saying replace them all. Just wondering why it seems like every choice of a non-white character needs scrutiny to pass some sort of acceptability test.

Which was my question to CritialGaming. When he said ?diversity shouldn?t be forced? and that the their putting a handicapped woman in a advert for BFV was ?forced? and ?had no purpose? and ?[she was] there for the sake of it and not for any character reasons,? it sounded very much like he feels ?straight white guy? is the default, the norm, for videogames, if not the gold standard, and that just rubbed me the wrong way. The idea that making a fictional character something other than a white guy needs to have a specific narrative purpose and ?make sense;? like, what about non-white characters DOESN?T make sense? Are some people so self-absorbed and over represented in the medium (media, for that matter) that they?ve simply claimed it as their own, ala manifest destiny?

... But no, seriously, what happened to Anthem Reviews?

General consensus: the pooch was thoroughly screwed; might be a great game in a couple years, but an insultingly anemic outing today.

 

[Satinavian]

... But no, seriously, what happened to Anthem Reviews?

General consensus: the pooch was thoroughly screwed; might be a great game in a couple years, but an insultingly anemic outing today.

Honestly, rumors are that it is not particularly good. And it is EA. And it is a multiplayer game that will die if it doesn't get a big audience fast in a genre that is utterly oversaturated.

With this outlook i wouldn't have bought it even if i had been initially interested, And i am sure not alone. We probably don't get many Anthem reviews becaue hardly anyone here actually has the game.

 

[Hawki]

It's the same thing when transphobes are suddenly the experts on trans characters when they show up

"I openly mock and question transgenderism but this character revealed their dead name to the protagonist when asked about their history so it's bad trans representation!"

I thought it was transgender individuals complaining, stating that "we rarely talk like that - we don't just talk about our "dead name" in the second conversation."

... What the hell? I came in to see more about Anthem Reviews? What.. How..?

Either it's indicative of Anthem being lacklustre, or that threads will always get derailed eventually. Or fuck it, both.

 

[Something Amyss]

b) that this is typical for the relationship of games with women in general?

In general, which does not apply to all games and is not out of keeping with your insistince that there are some female-targeted games. However, that's not the approach you took, and decided to flip out because I said that a female lead doesn't necessarily mean a female audience.

Neither does that make it hypocritical to talk about games in general.

I actually had to google what OneChanbara games are. Yes, they seem to have a male target audience. What has that ro do with all the games that have a female target audience ?

Because I have a memory longer than three seconds and can remember the comments that triggered the reaction. My only conclusion was that a female lead does not make a female-targeted game. Something you keep agreeing with while trying to force a contradiction. So you can keep up the argument if you want, I'm done wasting my time on this.

General consensus: the pooch was thoroughly screwed; might be a great game in a couple years, but an insultingly anemic outing today.

One of the biggest problems is actually that the most interesting thing about the game might be the evidence gamers claim to have found of what was cut out and how the game was stripped down. There may be controversies surrounding games, but when the biggest story is how you cut out content (sometimes demoed content) in order to have a one-year plan without additional effort, your game probably isn't that interesting.

It's a shame. I had friends eyeing this, and another game we can play together seemed like a good deal. But it looks like EA had to EA things.

I thought it was transgender individuals complaining, stating that "we rarely talk like that - we don't just talk about our "dead name" in the second conversation."

The only time I've ever heard something akin to "transgender people don't talk like that was, ironically, right here on the Escapist, and it's a form of gatekeeping that hsould not be tolerated within the trans community.

The primary thing about trans etiquette is listening, because different people have different comfort levels, and it's usually someone else telling us we don't. It's usually the people who don't want trans people existing in media at all who dig for excuses to complain. To use undead suitor's example, there are fandoms for the trans characters people complained about in Bioware games on the Tumblr sphere, and they have a fair level of popularity with trans folk, including in a fair number of cases non-gamers. This is a community where you expect witch hunts, and you get adoration instead.

There's also a very real issue of actively seeking representation, and as a result, early cues that someone is trans are probably going to be more welcome than in another scenario. For "invisible" minorities, there is the question of how you brooch the topic. Being open about something is easier than relying on stereotypical cues.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I thought it was transgender individuals complaining, stating that "we rarely talk like that - we don't just talk about our "dead name" in the second conversation."

So, I think there's a surface level here, and then there's what's really going on.

On the surface level, if we take literally that what's being said there is "trans people don't talk about themselves this way", then that's wrong. Trans people are as diverse as any other group of people, and they have different ways of talking about themselves.

But I think what's actually being said here is that sometimes depictions of trans people reflect a set of beliefs and priorities cis people have about trans people, and one of the unfortunate things trans people have to live with sometimes is the assumption that your assigned name is your "real" name, and thus that knowing your assigned name is important. The concept of a "deadname" actually refers to a practice of using trans people's assigned names as a way of attacking them or invalidating their gender identity.

So, you could definately make the argument that having a character talk about their assigned name/deadname soon after meeting them is bad representation, but if it is then it's bad representation because it's conveying a messed up idea trans people have to deal with in real life (that your assigned name is your "real" name and something you owe people).

But at the end of the day, I think I can speak for most people of any minority in saying that (well meaning) bad representation is almost always better than no representation. It may look cringey a few years down the line, but only by comparison to properties which probably wouldn't exist without bad representation to lead the way.

With all this said, however. There is a weird phenomenon where media properties which are clearly making an effort can actually attract more criticism than properties which are just bad, and it's to do with accessibility. The more likely you feel someone is to respond or to listen, the more likely you are to talk to them. I think this is ultimately what drives the anti-diversity myth that underrepresented minorities are impossible to please, because often those minorities are just more willing to talk honestly about what is "wrong" with representations which they percieve as well-intentioned simply because it's more likely to have an impact, and the people who have creative control are more approachable and easier to talk to than someone whose representation is so bad it doesn't come off as well-intentioned.

Like, noone is going to get anything out of telling EL James that her depiction of a BDSM relationship is bad or insulting, because she doesn't care. She's made very clear she doesn't care by publishing her books in the first place. But people might be more willing to talk about really small problems with the Iron Bull romance from DA:I because whoever made it clearly set out to write a healthy BDSM relationship. There was enough good faith there that discussing any potential problems, however small, might actually be listened to and built upon down the line. Thus, sometimes it might look like people are "complaining".. but they're complaining because they actually care about this property, and that actually indicates good representation.

Then there are people who exploit the lower social capital of minority creators to call them out or "cancel" them for extremely minor political concerns which derive from an authentic description of their own experiences of marginalization, and I'm going to call that what it is.. it's just bigotry. It's the same bigotry as always, stemming from the relative accessibility of minorities and their reduced willingness to fight back. It's not motivated by a desire for good representation.

 

[Drathnoxis]

BioWare will die, so Respawn could live. So it was written.

...written by whom?

...MrCalavera. You just read it.

Bioware did this to themselves.

This. Let's not kid ourselves and pretend as if Bioware's problems since 2012 were all due to big bad EA forcing evil monetization onto Bioware. Bioware had its glory days in the decade or so between 1998 (Baldur's Gate) and 2009 (Dragon Age: Origins) and, depending on your feelings on ME2, has been in a quick decline since the release of DA2 at the latest. Bioware's writing nosedived around the release of ME2/DA2 and their latest games have pretty much been lackluster stories with a few standout party members to garner player interest. Their gameplay peaked around ME3 with DA:I and ME:A providing some really padded, barren open worlds and, in the case of DA:I, a near broken UI on PC.

If we are talking number of games, it is technically zero. EA announced the acquisition of Bioware in October 2007, with Mass Effect being released in November. Obviously, EA had no input into the process of making Mass Effect, which means it can be seen as the only game in that series that wasn't under the supervision of EA. But everything after that, including DA:O, was made under EA's supervision.

As I said in my previous post, I don't think we should blame EA too much for Bioware's failings (excluding DA2, which is all EA's fault). Rather, the really good writers, directors and producers at Bioware left and the people that took over were not on the same level. This can be seen in the gradual decline in details first orientation in Bioware games (ME and DA:O featured extreme world building via their codices) in favor of drama first, but also the increasing dissatisfaction of long-time fans with both the stories and gameplay of newer games. Somewhere along the way Bioware lost its touch.

I fail to see how that isn't EA's fault. Dragon Age: Origins had been in development since 2002 and full-scale development since 2005. EA acquired Bioware in October 2007 and by that point a good portion of the development of the game had been finished. By the time they got everything straightened out from the merging I doubt EA had enough time to do more than some minor meddling like adding that merchant who hounds you to buy the DLC in the camp and carving Shale off as day one DLC before the November 2009 release.

Bioware had been releasing gold up until EA bought them and then suddenly every game they release is worse than the last and they are on a downward spiral. Yes it's also because all the talent bled out from the studio, but that's what happens in badly managed companies, the good people leave.