College essays and videogames

[Semper_Fidelis53]

I'm writing an essay for my english class in college and I was wondering if you guys would answer a couple questions for me.

1. Do you believe that the better than life apperances of videogame characters hold you to higher expectations in order to impress the favored gamer gender?

2. Do you find how women are portrayed as large breasted bimbos in most games deemening to women? Likewise about men being portrayed as overly muscled emotionless pricks?

3. Do you believe that the images in video games are worse than those in advertising and television?

 

[Axolotl]

1.No.

2.Personally I've never really played an games like this.

3.I don't understand the question.

 

[Semper_Fidelis53]

Games like Soulcaliber and Final Fantasy. And a lot of television and adverstiting portray women as sex objects, etc.

 

[curlycrouton]

I'm writing an essay for my english class in college and I was wondering if you guys would answer a couple questions for me.

1. Do you believe that the better than life apperances of videogame characters hold you to higher expectations in order to impress the favored gamer gender?

2. Do you find how women are portrayed as large breasted bimbos in most games deemening to women?

3. Do you believe that the images in video games are worse than those in advertising and television?

If you're going to write part of an English essay on women in video-games, you might want to know how to spell demeaning.


Other than that, I think it's great what you're doing, striking a blow for games in serious academia.
Congratulations.

 

[BlackZero]

1. No

2. from what i've seen it's about 50-50

3. it all depends on the substance of the game, game has more gore, but televison has progams and commercials designed to make people think drugs are cool, and that you should drink alcohol, so i don't know about that one

 

[Axolotl]

Games like Soulcaliber and Final Fantasy. And a lot of television and adverstiting portray women as sex objects, etc.

In that case
2.No

3. No.

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

I'm guessing your writting some kind of essay on sexism inherant in video games? The first question I don't really understand; are you asking if unnaturally attractive video game characters raise my expectations of real women? The answer to that is no. The second I tend to avoid games like this because a general rule of thumb is the more overly sexualized the women lead character is the worse the game is. For the third I would say that video ames have a long, long way to catch up with adverts and television in terms of overly sexualizing women characters.

 

[Nazulu]

1. No

2. I haven't found that many, this reminds me of Lineage 2 because the more body you show the more armour you have, for female players of coarse!

3. If you mean movies aswell then I say they are alot more realistic on TV. The movie Saw made me cringe, some movies have unbelievable blood lust, and that torture movie was advertised everywhere!

 

[Solfoster]

You might want to check out http://vorpalbunnyranch.blogspot.com/ which deals with gender and sexuality in games.

And in response to question 2: Do you find it demeaning that video game males are often portrayed as body builder Rambo-types? Which is in stark contrast to the cultural image of the video game nerd...

 

[Danglybits]

No, they're not real. They're only real in the link between my head and the screen. It's a sad day when I think I need to impress someone cause videogame people are so hot.

Yes, terribly. And even if they aren't big titted bimbos I'm still seeing women that are at best plot devices and at worse things to be acted on. It's such a shallow projection fantasy. "Wow that woman is hot, and she thinks I'm (your character) hot heh heh heh" Or we're seeing woman that are in love with the male lead, no matter how talented she is she always defers to Johnny Jackoff. I wouldn't be so annoyed if there were more man-candy in games to balance it out. I mean, if we're gonna objectify women then men should be fair game. Especially since I'm constantly hearing males trying to figure out how to get their girl friend to play games; take the super model off screen.

If it matters at all, yes I'm female.

I'd love to answer this question but I don't understand. I haven't seen much product placement in games but if you mean sex sells, then not really. Games aren't preying on you as much as adverts are. And they have longer than 30 seconds to tell you what they're about.

Good luck mate! And yeah fight for games in academia!

 

[JaKhajiit]

1. I'm not sure I understand this question either, but I'm interpreting it as; do I hold myself to a higher standard in order to impress gamer guys because I feel threatened by the women portrayed in video games? No, I think my being real gives me a distinct advantage over these girls. At least, I hope so.

2. To an extent, yes.

3. No.

 

[Danny Ocean]

1. Poorly worded, but do you mean something along the lines of, "Do the more-beautiful-than-humanly-possible women from video games raise your standards in real life?" If yes, then no.

2. I don't find it demeaning, but then again I'm not a woman. Don't forget that men are all heavily muscled action men, as well.

Fish. They are no worse than those on TV in the sense of demeaning women, or making unachievable visions of perfection. You can always turn the game off, advertising is everywhere.

 

[Axolotl]

Yes, terribly. And even if they aren't big titted bimbos I'm still seeing women that are at best plot devices and at worse things to be acted on. It's such a shallow projection fantasy. "Wow that woman is hot, and she thinks I'm (your character) hot heh heh heh" Or we're seeing woman that are in love with the male lead, no matter how talented she is she always defers to Johnny Jackoff. I wouldn't be so annoyed if there were more man-candy in games to balance it out. I mean, if we're gonna objectify women then men should be fair game. Especially since I'm constantly hearing males trying to figure out how to get their girl friend to play games; take the super model off screen.

Is this particularly common? I've never seen this in a game, Maybe it's just the games I've played but honestly I've never seen it.

 

[StarkRavingSane]

1. No

2. If you were to rephrase that question to something like "Do you find how women are portrayed as large breasted bimbos in SOME games deamening to women?" then I'd say yes.

If you use something as vague as "in most games" without trying to prove it in any way (which would be v. difficult) the proffessor who'll be checking it will probably say it's an over-generalisation. Unless he/she's a very dumb or biased proffessor or doesn't give a shit as the case might be. Personally few games that I play contain characters that are demeaning to women or characters that are extremely attracttive.

Then again I might be biased as I happen to be living in a country where the majority of citizens is visually attractive which in turn makes us often regard v. attractive people portrayed by foreign media as "plain" or "common" in regards to attractiveness.

I used the word "attractive" a lot, it's probably very Freudian of me.

3. Nope, IMO games won't top TV advertising when it comes to the use of crude visual stimuli.

People, write such essays if you can, let's make the academic world realise Games are Significant. Good luck, Semper_Fidelis53!

 

[rossatdi]

1. God no. And fingers crossed a fair fee of us have more sex appeal than Gordon Freeman and look less likely to rape people than Marcus Fenix.

2. Yes, obviously but some are fighting back Alyx, the chick from Portal and the girl from Beyond Good and Evil are perfect counter examples.

3. Not any worse but certainly no better.

 

[The Wooster]

No, they're not real. They're only real in the link between my head and the screen. It's a sad day when I think I need to impress someone cause videogame people are so hot.

Yes, terribly. And even if they aren't big titted bimbos I'm still seeing women that are at best plot devices and at worse things to be acted on. It's such a shallow projection fantasy. "Wow that woman is hot, and she thinks I'm (your character) hot heh heh heh" Or we're seeing woman that are in love with the male lead, no matter how talented she is she always defers to Johnny Jackoff. I wouldn't be so annoyed if there were more man-candy in games to balance it out. I mean, if we're gonna objectify women then men should be fair game. Especially since I'm constantly hearing males trying to figure out how to get their girl friend to play games; take the super model off screen.

I call bullshit. If it was busty bimbos that we're putting girls off games then the movie industry would lose 50% of it's business. Video games present an asthetic ideal and, believe it or not, they objectivify men in a very similar fashion.

 

[NeedAUserName]

1) No
2) Thats really for a woman to say, but I don't expect woman to expect men to be like that, except me for I am an over muscled emotionless (apart from the bad ones, and happy) prick, (not a complete one, but still a bit of a prick)
3) Depends on the context

 

[Saskwach]

A blog that deals with this issue, or something similar, fairly often is: http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/
One of the most recent articles that you might find relevant (technically written for Kotaku): http://kotaku.com/5070485/you-gotta-have-faith-does-style-beat-out-realism

 

[Pseudonym2]

1) N.A
2)The games reinforce negative gender roles.
3) The images are worse than advertising and comic books but not as bad as most movies.

 

[Galletea]

1) No
2) No as I personally have no problems with the exaggeration in videogames, if the men weren't equally as exaggerated, then I may have had a problem with it.
3) Depends, they don't tend to show 18 rated stuff in advertising, but the images in movies are at least as 'bad' if not worse in some cases.