Feminists next target; Battlefield 1.

[Dizchu]

How the hell is feminism even relevant to this discussion?

I don't like feminism very much but all of this "damn feminists ruin mah vidya gaymz" bullshit is getting so tiring, especially when feminists weren't involved in the first place.

You're actually making me side with the feminists here. That's how ridiculous it's become.

 

[CritialGaming]

Snip

Not defeatist. Realist.

I sit back and hope. But I feel like this whole women in video games thing is being approached in the wrong way. From my side of the fence, I see one-side conceiting and one side being stubborn and harsh. What's left is a view of how this movie plays out, and sadly it's a sad movie.

snip

Anita is an extremist in the sense that she does not do any legit research into her views. Often she'll state a fact about a game, yet provide no context for where her fact came from. Her arguments may have a baseline of good value, but they are discolored by poor information and incorrect context. She manipulates her information to make sure it fits her point, and that's what makes her so fucking scary. She's the FOX News of video game feminism.

Anita's bullshit is beyond the point here, because she is hardly the only person bashing video games with ignorance.

The point is how women would be treated on the battlefield of a WWI game. And I'm saying EA made a smart move by just not including them, if they couldn't find a good scenario for them. However their PR reasoning, as usual, is shit. Kind of like Nintendo and Linkle, or lack thereof.

 

[Stewie Plisken]

Yeah, except Battlefield isn't really shaping up to be realistic. Oh sure, they're using guns that existed, but they're using late war guns that barely saw any production and that everyone had. If you were a historically accurate soldier, you'd use a bolt-action rifle or a mounted machine-gun and relatively little else. You want a realistic WW I game? Verdun is how you do it. This is just the same old Battlefield game with a fresh coat of paint (I KNEW that they were going to go down this road)

And this is without getting into how the devs apparently didn't care about realism up until now.

And let's be frank, if we were to play a truly realistic WW I game, we'd play as someone who charged enemy lines and died halfway there.

Or a British soldier who was executed for moving across the No Man's Land too fast.

My point was that there is a difference between realistic gameplay and a realistic framework for the story/setting. You can have one without the other and vice-versa. As I said, the inclusion of Americans instead of other nations in this particular installment disqualifies the game from both categories, but, generally, realism is a perfectly valid argument, even if the gameplay takes a few liberties to be more user-friendly.

I don't know much about GTA, but I would say it's probably sexist not because you can kill prostitutes, but because with all the episodes of the series they still refuse to put a female among the protagonists.
And, I may be wrong, but are GTA's main characters males, with females as secondary or prostitute/lover roles?
Keep in mind I don't play GTA so I am making blind assumptions here. I'm trying to guess.

Nope, they're not. GTA's protagonists are psychopaths who spend about 25 hours brutally murdering other men and... that's it. I don't see how not including a female protagonist makes the series instantly sexist, especially considering how fucked in the head the protagonists traditionally are and the can of worms a company would potentially open by depicting a female hero in such a light. Regardless, when women do show up in GTA, they're not squeeky-clean either.

This is just a FYI, you said you don't play GTA, so not knowing about it is fair enough. But Rockstar, as a company, is of the entirely equal-opportunity offender flavor, which is what makes the complaints about these games particularly annoying and off-base.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Fair enough, but, like you said, it doesn't really work in this context.

 

[someguy1231]

Also, we're hiding behind realism now? Has anyone played a FPS before? Even Battlefield?

It's not like game developers can only choose between "Absolutely 100% realistic in every way" and "Never tries to be historically accurate at all." There's a very large middle ground, and that's what BF1 is going for. DICE will be sticking to the historical record as much as possible, only taking artistic liberties when necessary in order to preserve fun and fairness. Female soldiers did not officially fight in WW1, except for a brief usage of "women's battalions" by Russia in 1917, and from everything I've read about them, they weren't that effective. You may not like that, but to point to the game making a certain type of weapon more common than it might have been and saying "See? They're taking artistic liberties here! So why not make women fighting everywhere then?" is just absurd.

 

[Something Amyss]

I feel like this all started because 'the know' reported that a UI programmer/dev for BF4 was ranting on twitter on how DICE/EA backpedaled on their decision to include female modules/PC in MP and how they came up with some excuse(Historical accuracy) that latter turned out to be false. Since the reporting of the story the programmer has made her twitter account private.

Okay, so if I'm reading this right, a crap news source offered up a bogus claim that cannot be verified, and that started this in your estimation?

Not exactly a sterling reason for this thread to exist.

I don't know much about GTA, but I would say it's probably sexist not because you can kill prostitutes, but because with all the episodes of the series they still refuse to put a female among the protagonists.

Allow me to clear this up:

Anita never calls GTA sexist to my knowledge. Just like the Hitman claims, this has little to do with reality. What she did was use GTA footage as part of her video talking about women as background characters (and possibly others) where she talks about the fungibility of women. Of course, in outrage culture, Anita even showing a game translates to "this game is sexist and should be banned." This is what I meant when I said I normally have to dial back responses.

Also, the killing a prostitute to get your cash back dates back at least to the PS2 games, well before Anita said anything, but it has become her fault because...well, she "triggers" people.

Oh yeah, and I do play the GTA series, and it's hella sexist, frequently racist, pretty homophobic, and routinely transphobic. It's probably worth noting that in V, prostitutes will never fight back if you attack them.

Yeah, except Battlefield isn't really shaping up to be realistic. Oh sure, they're using guns that existed, but they're using late war guns that barely saw any production and that everyone had. If you were a historically accurate soldier, you'd use a bolt-action rifle or a mounted machine-gun and relatively little else. You want a realistic WW I game? Verdun is how you do it. This is just the same old Battlefield game with a fresh coat of paint (I KNEW that they were going to go down this road)

And this is without getting into how the devs apparently didn't care about realism up until now.

And let's be frank, if we were to play a truly realistic WW I game, we'd play as someone who charged enemy lines and died halfway there.

Or a British soldier who was executed for moving across the No Man's Land too fast.

"Historical accuracy" always seems to boil down to an argument of convenience. The last time I saw it used on any scale was the Assassin's Creed series, which is historically accurate like Doctor Who is hard sci-fi.

 

[Frankster]

Clicked this thread cos was like "battlefield 1..ain't that the ww1 game? what the heck is gonna be the issue there?".

And..I am outraged, fuming with rage, LIVID even.
We are going to be free to choose as many smgs and machine guns as we want?
No french and the awesome "poilu"? Yet we are getting America as a side instead?

God damnit. Including women based on them female russian propaganda regiments (of which only 1 even fought if I remember that documentary I watched ages ago well, and they lost that battle and ended up being prisoners alongside the other russians) seems like the least of it if you wanna rail about historical accuracy.

Actually come to think of it, I truly don't care about the whole woman thing. One of my favorite games, Mount and blade: napeolonic wars, is a multi shooter where you can freely choose the gender of your soldier avatar, the only ahistorical element in the game.
And it's actually kinda cool to see some French chick in uniform pick up the Flag of a downed comrade and scream "Pour la France, chargez!!!!!!" (For France, Chaaaaarge! because one of the awesome things about this game is characters can spam appropriate phrases and orders in the native language of the side you belong to) as she leads the charge down the breach.
As long as we don't suddenly pretend women were the bulk of those dieing in the trenches irl, I'm cool with a bit of cosmetical historical revisionism so long as the basics of the war (trench warfare if in european theater, things like mass charges with bayonets and no ammo so troops wouldn't stop to fire) were there. Which unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case..

Anyways, guess can cross the game of list of things I was looking forward to. Was hoping for a ww1 game with scenes like this:
Not people bunny hopping and hip firing with smgs.

 

[Vigormortis]

No.

Feminism is about equality.

Your version, sure.

Saying that there are different forms of feminism is like saying that I can totally be racist or homophobic, because there's different forms of racism and homophobia so maybe not all of them are necessarily bad. NO, racism is always bad because the very meaning of the word is of judging people based on their nationality or skin colour. Homophobia is always bad because it means hating a person's sexuality while that form of sexuality doesn't hurt anybody.

Uh, no it's not. You're conflating two completely different kinds of ideologies and opinions.

Apples to oranges, Wyvern. Can we keep the fallacies out of this discussion?

Besides, the fact that large sub-categories like "First-Wave feminism" and "Second Wave Feminism" exist kinda negates your argument.

Feminism is about equality, saying that some forms of feminism are bad is the same as saying some forms of racism or homophobia are good.

No, it's really not. I can say "there are some kinds of bread that don't taste that good" without being accused of saying "some kinds of dog shit taste good". You're putting words in my mouth. Can you please just not do that?

Trying to divide feminism into categories is the first step in trying to turn feminism into a NEGATIVE word.

First: I'm not dividing feminism into categories. Others have done this to form their own versions of feminism.

Second: Subdividing ideologies does NOT equate to trying to add a negative connotation to a word.

Jesus, Wyvern. Please stop putting words into my mouth. I'm eating a salad. My mouth's already full.

I've studied linguistics; I know how it works since it happened a lot of times.

Have you studied the history of feminism, past and modern? Because there ARE different forms of feminism.

Let's not make it happen again. Let's try to keep feminism a positive word, or it will hurt the ideals of equality it tries to promote.

That isn't what will undermine the efficacy of feminism. That people have done, and are doing, horrible things in the name of feminism, while other supporters of feminism act as though these sorts do not exist nor come out in staunch opposition to such behaviors, is what will do that.

I don't think I've ever met a feminist who promotes crazy ideas of women being better than men, or women not allowed to be sexy, or women not being allowed to be hurt in videogames while men can be.

Yet these behaviors are on display online and in the real world. That things like #KillAllMen exist, unironically, speaks to that. Your personal experience notwithstanding.

You're getting dangerously close to the NoTrueScotsman fallac...

Mind you, I'm sure that kind of people must exist, with millions of people in the world.
But saying that they are feminists is like saying that PETA are naturalists.

Never mind, you went straight into it.

I'm a firm supporter of equality, whether it comes in the form of feminism, humanism, what-have-you. But pretending that there aren't 'bad apples' within these ideologies serves nothing but to allow them to fester.

 

[shrekfan246]

Anita is an extremist in the sense that she does not do any legit research into her views.

Excuse me, but how much "research" does one need to do in order to criticize a video game? I think you'll find that a great many criticisms offered by the gaming community have no "legit research" behind them.

Often she'll state a fact about a game, yet provide no context for where her fact came from. Her arguments may have a baseline of good value, but they are discolored by poor information and incorrect context.

Like? Do you mean that one Hitman clip that everyone uses outside of context themselves?

She manipulates her information to make sure it fits her point, and that's what makes her so fucking scary. She's the FOX News of video game feminism.

Except that nothing she says is made up. In fact, most of it is Feminism 101 type stuff, and is pretty basic to understanding narrative criticism in general. It's hyperbole like this that builds her up as "the Fox News of video game feminism".

 

[MHR]

WW1 didn't even have women fighting, why in the world would they now? Why do we have to shoehorn everything in?

Well lets see how it turns out. Will the player character or any protagonist rush an enemy trench in a cinematic sequence to bayonet a woman soldier? And have her screaming in pain and begging for mercy in the mud, the same as would be done to the man. Let's see how well that goes over with feminists. Or will there only be women in the multiplayer to appeal to the popularity and simultaneously avoid any controversy?

"Equality" isn't even equal.

 

[CritialGaming]

snip - - -

I'm a firm supporter of equality, whether it comes in the form of feminism, humanism, what-have-you. But pretending that there aren't 'bad apples' within these ideologies serves nothing but to allow them to fester.

If you want proof of this, go look up the WEstbro Baptist Church and you'll find that these sick fuckers actually protested the funerals of the people killed in the Orlando Club Shooting. Because Jesus or some shit.

Apple to Oranges I know, but I wanted to show a recent example of extremists within groups.

It does, sadly, exist.

That doesn't mean it's happening here. But it does need to be acknowledged.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

If this game was even slightly historically accurate, I personally would not want to see female combatants in MP as I would find it to be fairly immersion breaking. Female combatants were not just rare, they were unheard of in the armed forces of the era. A Russian Women's Battalion is hardly sufficient to justify pretty significant historical revisionism, particularly when Russia has been omitted from the game.

However, seeing as every other soldier is carrying a SMG and the armored vehicles drive and handle like their modern counterparts...this game will have no serious sense of historical immersion whatsoever. It looks and plays absolutely nothing like a game about WWI should. It might as well be set in an alternate timeline or something. In this case, I really see no reason not to include women as combatants that players can choose. Why not?

The French and Russians have far greater reason to be annoyed with the BF1 devs. They were both major players in WWI yet have been ousted from the game by the Americans who only fought (badly) for the last 3 months of the war.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Well, EA dropped the ball here. I wouldn't expect female soldiers in a WW1 game, but I WOULD expect them in a game where they...said there would be female soldiers.

Pretty much this. If they promised they would do it then they should have gone through with it. EA/DICE probably decided they didn't want to spend money on the assets and models so backpedaled to "historical accuracy" to try and cover their asses. It's just such a cop out. I was a history major and I don't give a shit. It's a video game for crying out loud. If this was supposed to be some uber historical presentation of the Great War then I'd understand. But it's a game where everyone has a parachute at all times and you have magic vehicle repair tools. I don't see how boobs would be the final straw.

 

[Bombiz]

I feel like this all started because 'the know' reported that a UI programmer/dev for BF4 was ranting on twitter on how DICE/EA backpedaled on their decision to include female modules/PC in MP and how they came up with some excuse(Historical accuracy) that latter turned out to be false. Since the reporting of the story the programmer has made her twitter account private.

Okay, so if I'm reading this right, a crap news source offered up a bogus claim that cannot be verified, and that started this in your estimation?

Not exactly a sterling reason for this thread to exist.

I mean I wouldn't call them bogus. before the programmer made her twitter account private you could see that she did in fact tweet about those things. Plus she put on her resume that she has worked for DICE on the new Battlefield game.

 

[Areloch]

WW1 didn't even have women fighting, why in the world would they now? Why do we have to shoehorn everything in?

Well lets see how it turns out. Will the player character or any protagonist rush an enemy trench in a cinematic sequence to bayonet a woman soldier? And have her screaming in pain and begging for mercy in the mud, the same as would be done to the man. Let's see how well that goes over with feminists. Or will there only be women in the multiplayer to appeal to the popularity and simultaneously avoid any controversy?

"Equality" isn't even equal.

As linked in this thread, technically there were a relative handful of female soldiers on the Russian front(a few thousand) but only a few hundred ever actually saw combat. They were mostly for morale purposes, not an actual fighting force, not that some of the women didn't basically just flip the bird and go fight anyways.

That said, not sure that's sufficient enough a base for the appearance of female soldiers in the game, but whatever because apparently EA's just tossing even base attempts at accuracy out the window, between which forces are doing the fighting, the tech level, etc, so I'm just disappointed in general with where the game is going.
I'm willing to give modern shooters a bit more of a pass in what happens scenario/tech wise, but WW1 is already done, we know who was in it and what happened, EA. C'mon.

WW2 is a much better setting for female fighter shenanigans(again, as covered in this thread) what with well known snipers, pilots, spies, resistance fighters, etc.

As for your other part, yeah, I could see a LOT of people make a huge tizzy if you had one of those scripted sequences where an the player or an AI buddy tackles and slowly slides a knife into a woman soldier's neck as she gurgles herself to death, like we've had several times on male soldiers in the CoD and Battlefield games, so it'd be fair and equal, but hooooo boy I could imagine the yelling already.

 

[CritialGaming]

Anita is an extremist in the sense that she does not do any legit research into her views.

Excuse me, but how much "research" does one need to do in order to criticize a video game? I think you'll find that a great many criticisms offered by the gaming community have no "legit research" behind them.

Often she'll state a fact about a game, yet provide no context for where her fact came from. Her arguments may have a baseline of good value, but they are discolored by poor information and incorrect context.

Like? Do you mean that one Hitman clip that everyone uses outside of context themselves?

She manipulates her information to make sure it fits her point, and that's what makes her so fucking scary. She's the FOX News of video game feminism.

Except that nothing she says is made up. In fact, most of it is Feminism 101 type stuff, and is pretty basic to understanding narrative criticism in general. It's hyperbole like this that builds her up as "the Fox News of video game feminism".

1. Exactly the point! You DON'T need a lot a research. But you do need SOME! And she showed that she doesn't even do that much.

2. Just because other people took a clip out of context, doesn't mean that you should as well. Especially went you are trying to pass off "facts" using something out of context. It just makes your entire point seem shady because it looks like you couldn't be bothered to do five minutes of Googling before spitting your personal bias' as facts.

3. Most of what she says is actually completely made up. She exaggerates the impact of female treatment in video games, as if video games have been conditioning people for years to think of women as merely vessels for male enjoyment. Without any research, facts, or proof that these visions of pretty girls have had any sort of impact on people. She offers no evidence, no statistics, she merely spouts statements that the audience is just supposed to assume are true behind a background of games she has never played or even done enough to know who the characters she's badmouthing even are.

She is a parody. Her whole aim is to manipulate people into crowd funding her life, and offers nothing but bullshit in return.

Now that being said...Do I believe there is a basis to her problems with video games? Yes. Do I think that female representation can continue to improve? Hell Yes.

But every game doesn't need to pander to the equalitarian demand. Games like Zelda, GTA, and Battlefield, do not need female main characters, just because.

I want good female representation in gaming. Not token female placement, because the developer need to check a box.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm more amazed at USA for pretending it won WWI single-handed. They were barely in it! They only fought the last few months.

 

[Stewie Plisken]

Allow me to clear this up:

Anita never calls GTA sexist to my knowledge. Just like the Hitman claims, this has little to do with reality. What she did was use GTA footage as part of her video talking about women as background characters (and possibly others) where she talks about the fungibility of women. Of course, in outrage culture, Anita even showing a game translates to "this game is sexist and should be banned." This is what I meant when I said I normally have to dial back responses.

Also, the killing a prostitute to get your cash back dates back at least to the PS2 games, well before Anita said anything, but it has become her fault because...well, she "triggers" people.

Oh yeah, and I do play the GTA series, and it's hella sexist, frequently racist, pretty homophobic, and routinely transphobic. It's probably worth noting that in V, prostitutes will never fight back if you attack them.

How did you clear this up? We know that there was a petition that managed to get GTAV banned from a couple of stores in Australia on the grounds of "depicting violence against women", which is true enough, if you completely ignore the fact that it also depicts (a lot more) violence against men.

As for Anita, she has become the be-all end-all of feminist critique in gaming. It was gaming sites that put her there and she gladly accepted the role. You really think that this promotion has absolutely nothing to do with the outcry over certain games? GTA has indeed been doing this since the PS2 games and at the time the only people to complain so vocally about it were Jack Thompson and his ilk.

I haven't played GTAV yet, but I'm pretty sure you could kill the hot-dog vendors in GTAIV and they practically provided the same form of service, in terms of gameplay and mechanics.