Female Gamers: Are you tired of being presented with no dignity?

[Zer_]

I can see how people can get annoyed but I don't see how it's much different that Gears of War styles of making the men all tough and huge.

Check the title: it's about the female characters being presented with "no dignity." I wouldn't say being presented as "all tough and huge" is being presented as undignified, as some sort of object for someone else's pleasure. Someone presented all tough and huge is presented as a subject, a person who exists for himself and is large and in charge.

That's the difference.

That's not what he means. What he's referring to is men being presented as large and violent and unable to see any other method of solving a problem than "shoot it, or if you're lucky and it gets close, cut it in half with a chainsaw".

However, even as a guy, I think the objectification of women in video games is a bad thing. And even worse, it's unnecessary. Even for a male target audience, having female characters that are real and not solely sex objects is actually usually much more memorable and, in fact, preferable. I submit Alyx from Half Life 2 and Zoey from Left 4 Dead as prime examples.

Me personally, I consider Claire Redfield in Resident Evil 2 to be one of my favorite characters.

Thank you.

If portraying men as gigantic hulks that are largely ignorant of anything and have little to no intelligence and resort to violence first isn't a sexist stereotype then neither is showing unrealistically proportioned women with skimpy clothing.

First you were talking about how it is unrealistic and makes people self conscious (which both stereotypes are and do) and now you are talking about the whole object versus subject thing.

A violent hulk with no personality is portrayed as much of an object as a subservient women, in my opinion.

Didn't you read the sentence in the OP's post about how stating that it goes both ways is not a valid argument? Geeze learn to be sensible! >.>

 

[Ultra_Caboose]

Thank you.

If portraying men as gigantic hulks that are largely ignorant of anything and have little to no intelligence and resort to violence first isn't a sexist stereotype then neither is showing unrealistically proportioned women with skimpy clothing.

First you were talking about how it is unrealistic and makes people self conscious (which both stereotypes are and do) and now you are talking about the whole object versus subject thing.

A violent hulk with no personality is portrayed as much of an object as a subservient women, in my opinion.

I don't know if I'd really consider the Gears of War characters a sexist stereotype... Granted, they are a bunch of armor-clad meatheads with more brains in their bullets than in their heads, but I don't think it's sexist as must as it is escapist. I think a lot of men who design games design characters around their desires and fantasies. A lot of us guys grew up as kids playing games where we were tough war heroes, blowing up bad guys and saving the day, albeit not exaggerated to such a severe level as in Gears. The muscle-bound tough guy hero isn't so much a stereotype as it is a cliche nowadays.

I do agree that these characters generally have no substance whatsoever. Granted, in Gears' case, with equally huge enemies, an oversized gorilla of a main character is to be expected, and is pretty much a vessel to take you from one murderfest to another. Though, I admit I might have found the GOW games more interesting if the soldier were more of an every-man. I might've identified with them more, and might've actually given a damn about them.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is that characters with rediculous proportions, male or female, are designed to fit the context of their game universe, and aren't designed as such if the game means to truly take them seriously.

 

[tsolless]

Didn't you read the sentence in the OP's post about how stating that it goes both ways is not a valid argument? Geeze learn to be sensible! >.>

Yes, but I happen to disagree.

 

[axia777]

Men will never, ever stop objectifying females. It is a fact of life. We have a penis, we have testicles and we have a sex drive that are all connected to the deepest parts of our brains. Even the most intellectual and enlightened male does it. It is genetic. This is all a fact of life. The only ones who do not do it are gay (and they objectify all other men) or are men with the unfortunate curse of having no sex drive at all. That is just how men are. Expecting this to change is like expecting the sky to change it's color to purple or the sun to just disappear. Why do women keep fighting this? It is a hopeless venture on their part.

Sure more games with non-objectified female characters need to get made to take advantage of that demographic. That is only intelligent business sense. But having an expectation that the image of the "sexy, hot, objectified, female" is going to ever go away is hopeless as it is wrong headed. Men will just not have it. We like tits and we like ass. We like hot chicks. What is wrong with that? It is only natural. If some women can not deal with that I just don't not know what to tell them. If this makes me a pig them I guess I am a pig. So be it. I respect plenty of women in my life too. Jell, I am raising my daughter to be a strong independent women who can stand on her own two feet. But as long as video games are made by men it is going to be this way.

The bright side is more women are getting into to the industry so have faith gamer women of the world! More game with heroines you can respect and even relate with are most likely coming your way in the next few years.

But personally as a male who likes sexy female figures I dearly hope that they never, ever stop making games with hot chicks in them. That would be a sad day for gaming IMHO. That is all I have to say on this subject.

 

[Alarid]

In reality, both sexes want to look good and be amazing. Essentialy the game stereotypes represent this fully. Most men don't admit it, but they want to be the testosterone crazy man with a chainsaw killing aliens, taking names with an adorable can-do attitude. Women also want to be the best they can be, and as you can see with female athletes; this also encompasses beauty as well. Of course stereotypes in video games take these stereotypes to their logical extremes - the man sweating testosterone to women so beautiful they have to show as much of it as they can.

 

[Stalk3rchief]

Honestly, that phase in gaming is almost all but gone.
Left 4 dead showed us that with Zoey. It seems only low rate games or game made by Japanese over emphasize on the massive bust with the 3 inch waist.
It will always be a factor though, has been for ages. Markets don't care about actual females and the like, they'll simply take any edge they can and use it on men.
That edge is dull and lusterless [mostly thanks to the internet] but it's still being used regardless.

 

[Kais86]

Both males and females suffer from this, but since female architecture is so much nicer than male architecture it is far more egregious, after all it's fine if one straight girl calls another straight girl cute for wearing a piece of clothing it's ok, but if a straight boy calls another straight boy cute for wearing the a piece of clothing he is considered to be gay, even if he isn't, then people give him funny looks and his friends tease him about it. The only real difference is that males bare less skin, but this is art mimicking life, males usually cover more skin than females, and like many things in art much of it is exaggerated greatly.

All of media is expressly for making money, no matter what Uwe Boll seems to think, and sex sells, this is why dignity goes out the window for both sexes that's just how these things roll.

 

[SecretSmoke]

I'd just like to say, (as a dood) that the whole over-sexy improbable character thing does go both ways, and that the media has done a pretty good job of setting an unreasonable standard for both sexes. However, I'll admit that it's getting rather silly on the female side. (a girls breasts shouldn't flop all over the place with the slightest motion, for example.) I would like to see more "regular" girls, and men too, if only because it's hard to maintain immersion when everyone looks like perfect tens, or wear improbable clothing. (The whole bikini armour thing is getting pretty old.)

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I can see how people can get annoyed but I don't see how it's much different that Gears of War styles of making the men all tough and huge.

Check the title: it's about the female characters being presented with "no dignity." I wouldn't say being presented as "all tough and huge" is being presented as undignified, as some sort of object for someone else's pleasure. Someone presented all tough and huge is presented as a subject, a person who exists for himself and is large and in charge.

That's the difference.

Sure but often these people are represented as being testosterone bound dumbasses who are not intelligent in any way and live only for killing.

No differences, both are equally sexist and I am incredibly amazed that you are even attempting to deny this.

Thank you! you said it so much more curtly than I .... guys in video games tend to be steroid induced behemoths that are made of kevlar, or pretty boys.

The problem is that modern culture women want either, and preferably the latter ...

Play any of the Tex Murphy games, and you get a slightly overweight, occassionally clever, average sorta guy ... and he has trouble getting the love of his life (Chelsea) to see him as worthy as a love interest.

Most game characters ... especially out of japan .. it seems girls want their male characters to look like .. well .. girls.

So it's unfair to have big breasted, scantily clad women in games ... but its completely okay for women to shun the fact that if you're neither the bodybuilder, or the androgynous, then you're unattractive. Wtf?

 

[MajoraPersona]

I would usually keep this within the Girl Gamer group... but just in case you haven't joined, or you didn't know it existed, I thought I'd share one of our rants with the rest of the escapist.
From characters to covers, women are repeastedly represented in unrealistic, often impossible (according to physics and anatomy) ways, that are completely IRRELEVENT to their characters. So none of those "What about Superman's chest?" comebacks. He has to be strong to beat the crap out of people, you don't need GG breasts and a leather suit to be a kick-butt lady.
SO girls, what are your thoughts?
PS - I am not saying females are ALWAYS presented this way, just most of the time. A *big* most.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans

Women are for babies and milk. It is inappropriate for them to be expected to be violent and manipulative while being percieved as heroic if they are not over-the-top and obviously made-up.

Fiction and non-fiction are seperate for a reason. In fact, they're so seperate, there's another word that means non-fiction, and has a large number of derivatives. Really.

So none of those "What about Superman's chest?" comebacks. He has to be strong to beat the crap out of people, you don't need GG breasts and a leather suit to be a kick-butt lady.

Pecs are vital to lifting, levitation, and x-ray eyes? Well, so much for everything my martial arts teacher and her stacks of exercise books with muscle diagrams have to say on the matter.

Musculature is a fun thing, because I don't understand that much about it. All I know is it's heavier than fat, and it's why I'm theoretically able to beat up little girls in said martial arts classes (though I've since graduated from my high school).

Physical activity would, in reality, make their boobs tiny and leave the girls quite lean, since girls tend to have more fat than guys (read the link). If anything, action girls in movies and video games should have pea-sized tits, because we're never going to be feeling them up and impregnating the girls in question, so there's no point to knowing that she's able to have lots of babies. Which is the biological reason for any girl having watermelons on her chest.

 

[cobra_ky]

while there's still plenty of shallow female characters based on sexist stereotypes, i think it's only one aspect of a much larger problem with character design in general. Stereotypes simply don't produce interesting characters, because they're easily predictable and usually unrealistic. it's as true of gay and black characters in games as it is of women in games.

but yeah, it annoys me personally, because i don't find ridiculous caricatures of women particularly attractive at all.