God of War Team "Pulling Back" From Violence Against Women

[Moonlight Butterfly]

You seem to be distracted with the thought that feminists want female characters to be wrapped up head to toe. That isn't the case and is just false.

What they and I would like is for female characters to be more than eye candy in both appearance and the way they are presented. Female heroines could be similar in build to olympic athletes not underwear models. Unfortunately you get this opinion from devs that the first thing about a female character should be how attractive she is to a man. Like the space marine game dev who said 'We could put female characters in but how could we make them sexy?'

Miranda in Mass Effect 2 is a good example. She is capable and intelligent yet the camera constantly hovers around her bum, she wears tight clothing and heels in combat situations and one can not escape the fact that the devs are bascially putting this woman across as a sex object. Why even do that...why do male gamers need that dynamic. Why can't we just have a female character who isn't there for YOU and is just a character in her own right.

I can't really exert how annoying it is to have this constant reminder that you aren't the intended audience in the most skeevy way possible.

No no no. I do not think these people are feminists, they do CLAIM to be feminists as they spout this conservative agenda of objecting to any an all depiction of the female body, I think they are conservatives.

Actual definitive feminists don't have a problem with Lara Croft. This is not a "no true scotsman" fallacy, this is definitively what feminism is.

Yes, I am definitely in favour of more muscular women in action games, yet these so-called-feminists even denigrate the likes of the Street Fighter cast to spite their considerable musculature on females, the common theme - as so very well established with the likes of Sarkeesian - is blanket objection to them showing as much skin as men. It's not how powerful they are, it's how if they don't hide their bodies they are sexual and that is a terrible thing.

I haven't played Mass Effect 2 yet. The impression I get from characters like Miranda are not exactly drawing me in. On the other hand you have Jack, who seems like the exact opposite of Miranda. If I was choosing who to go on what missions I'd always chose Jack over Miranda and I'd ask Miranda if she was really committed at all. But I have to be reasonable, I wouldn't be a ***** to a woman wearing heels, so why would I ***** to Miranda?

"Why can't we just have a female character who isn't there for YOU and is just a character in her own right."

I'm pretty sure Mass Effect does have female characters that are characters in their own right. Or are you really wanting to say:

"Why can't we just have a GAME where there is not ANY female character who is there for YOU, only characters in their own right."

And all the characters in one way or another that there FOR YOU. The game exists and these characters exist for you to view them, to be appreciated in any and many ways.

Also, hang on a second, I haven't finished Mass Effect but my understanding is that to spite being able to play as either a male or female Shephard, there is always the romance option with a female. That means you are always ROLE PLAYING (in a role playing game) as either a man with heterosexual desires or a female with homosexual desires. The camera is following where your ROLE'S attention is. It's my understanding in later games there are male romance options, where either male Shepard or female Shepard can shack up with a dude.

Stop trying to break the immersion by thinking "who is the director doing this for" or "the producer said this". No, get into the fiction. Say you are watching a movie you get one shot of a guy looking across the street, then the next shot is of a woman's arse, that is the film showing what the guy across the street is looking at. Stop thinking about target markets and intent, and just get into the role.

I'd be totally fine playing a male character who has a gay relationship (I'm a straight guy) why would you have a problem with role playing a guy having crush on a gal?

The romances aren't the issue you can have a romance with a male character as femshep. Again you are completely missing the point.

The point is that you can't avoid the fact that your screen is filled up with Miranda's butt and that she is put across in a sexual way. She isn't a character in her own right she is primarily there to look sexy for the guys.

It's unnecessary and is the point that female gamers are try to get across. We want our videogame characters to be people not sex objects.

One of the best examples of female characters is Avatar: The Last Airbender where the female characters have a wide range of personalities and react just as heroically or evil as the male characters.

 

[Treblaine]

Dude I played the Tomb Raider games when they came out and I loved them. I was talking about the recent comments that were made about the reboot and why people had a bad reaction to it.

You seem to repeatedly ignore the jist of what I'm saying and cherry pick comments.

I am sorry, I don't mean to cherry pick, I tried to address all your points and your posts are very dense with assertions. No cherry picking, I take the whole tree branch by branch.

If you played the original series you know Lara had a VERY similar experience 12 years ago in Tomb Raider Chronicles, molested at gun point then kicked the guy in the balls. This didn't destroy Lara's character, it was just one small episode in her life that was not unbearable.

Thanks to all the fuss what would likely have made for a very tense scene will be cut from the new Tomb Raider game, it made sense not to "toughen up" Lara, I have no idea where that idea came from, but as a threat to overcome. It's not rape to "toughen up" it is that rape is a very tangible threat that has been explored in many other forms of media and not exclusively with women at all.

And you comments about people who play Tomb Raider games "wanting to protect Lara" sound like someone who'd never played a Tomb Raider game, as if you didn't want Lara to get hurt, why are you playing a game that puts her in dangerous environments?

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Dude I played the Tomb Raider games when they came out and I loved them. I was talking about the recent comments that were made about the reboot and why people had a bad reaction to it.

You seem to repeatedly ignore the jist of what I'm saying and cherry pick comments.

I am sorry, I don't mean to cherry pick, I tried to address all your points and your posts are very dense with assertions. No cherry picking, I take the whole tree branch by branch.

If you played the original series you know Lara had a VERY similar experience 12 years ago in Tomb Raider Chronicles, molested at gun point then kicked the guy in the balls. This didn't destroy Lara's character, it was just one small episode in her life that was not unbearable.

Thanks to all the fuss what would likely have made for a very tense scene will be cut from the new Tomb Raider game, it made sense not to "toughen up" Lara, I have no idea where that idea came from, but as a threat to overcome. It's not rape to "toughen up" it is that rape is a very tangible threat that has been explored in many other forms of media and not exclusively with women at all.

And you comments about people who play Tomb Raider games "wanting to protect Lara" sound like someone who'd never played a Tomb Raider game, as if you didn't want Lara to get hurt, why are you playing a game that puts her in dangerous environments?

That was the comment the guy made at E3 about the reboot. I was explaining to the guy I quoted what the issue was recently. Why are you trying to make out I meant the old games :|

 

[Evil Smurf]

*pauses DOOM* I liked it better when games did not worry about sexism, it was so much fun then. *resumes DOOM*

 

[SpartanBlackman]

Isn't violence against women good? I thought feminists wanted equal opportunity bloodshed.

 

[emeraldrafael]

not that i think this game NEEDS violence against women, but I think at this point its a bt hard to stop and say no, we wont be part of that anymore. whatever cause you want to support, it cheapens it when you look back at the other games and see that you can mercilessly kill women in them (not to mention the sex mini games that ares suppposed to be easter egg type deals).

... and really, isnt Kratos a spartan, so in the real world he wouldnt have an issue with killing the woman, as long as he raped her first just because thats how things got fucking done?

captcha's kinda relevant, face the music indeed.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

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I fail to see a difference. How is being an @sshole in the name of conquest and ambition somehow better than being an @sshole in the name of revenge? That's like saying the Nazis were really great guys once you get to know them. They all had wives and children, so they must be good people. They weren't killing out of anger, it was just their day job, so that makes it okay.

Seriously, you're pulling the nazi card? Ehem... no, I won't go that way, no.

I'll try to explain it. Think of Kratos as a weapon. Before killing his family he was kind of a machine gun. Destructive and deadly, yes, but not indiscriminately so. He didn't want to destroy the world, he wanted to conquer it. Think that you are trying to conquer the world and rule over it. Not so good to just off everyone you ever meet, for then there's no one to rule over, is it?

By GoW3, Kratos had become the equivalent of a nuke. He wanted nothing but revenge, and didn't just care about literally anything anymore. He wanted everything around him to die and disappear, and basically ended the world in the end of GoW3.

You can kind of see what some would call "character change" (I think of it as more of a descent to madness) from the things he says. In http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au7RLJ5xkgI at 3:54 he says he will stop "When the glory of Sparta is known throughout the world".

And in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au7RLJ5xkgI at 1:53 "I hope for nothing". Sounds kinda worse, doesn't it? He's lost all reason, all there is left is madness, devastation and death.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Isn't NOT being violent with women purely because they are women sexist in it's own way? I'm not saying it's a good thing, for you thick skulled types, but it's just like racism. The less lines we draw, the less everyone will care and the more the same we'll all be. And instead of being about who or what is being brutalized, it'll be about why. And in this case, because it's a video game.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Yawn. Can someone wake me when the feminism fad dies down again?

 

[Clearing the Eye]

As long as the intention of the violence isn't to titillate then I don't have a problem with it.

Otherwise it's actually kind of disturbing.

What about fetishism and paraphilia centering around violence?

 

[Charli]

There better be some kind of traumaic, life changing, legitimate excuse for this or the team is completely missing the point of 'being sexist'.

Kratos kills everything and everyone for his cause. Why now has he suddenly developed momma issues and decided killing one half of the population is a no go?

He's a psychopath. That is established and most beloved by players. Why give him morality because of current real-time issues. That's just kinda shit.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

So indirectly they're saying violence against males and children on the other hand is OK?

 

[soh45400]

Like I said I would have no problem with a female topless Kratos a long as she wasn't posed in a boobs and butt pose 24/7 and she was as fearsome as her male counterpart. Physical appearance almost isn't the issue it's how that appearance comes across.

Feminists like Sarkeesian aren't complaining about clothes they are complaining about the way a character is presented. An oversexualised male fantasy or a simpering damsel in distress.

Look at my comic book example earlier on in this thread. Surely you can see the difference.

I really think you are misrepresenting Sarkeesians views there too. Violence against women isn't the issue. It's when the women who are being attacked are sexualised, like the sexy nuns, that is the problem.

The God of War devs have missed the point.

Unattainable ideal isn't the issue at all

It seems you have this twisted view of what these feminists are saying ie: We can't ever look like that so we don't like it. That is NOT what anyone is saying.

The problem is what is a sexual pose and is not is so subjective that I have heard people call a pose like this...

http://www.tombraiderchronicles.com/images/legacy_art_27/screen2.jpg

... as "a blatantly sexual pose" with complete seriousness. The sexist prejudice of people - men and women - is so great if a woman is recognisably female that they cannot see anything about them but sex.

Sarkeesian has objected to female characters JUST FOR BEING SEXUAL, when they are in no-way at all simpering or playing as a "damsel". To spite the huge backlash by fans of Metroid the Other M for how they presented Samus so out of character as a simpering damnsel in distress, her silence on this issue has been deafening. The worst example of sexism she has nothing to say on.

Her concern over and over and over and OVER again has been women being presented as sexual. Full stop.

I can see the difference in the comic you posed but I have come to realise that conservatives won't allow it. I WOULD LOVE to have a character like that in video games, I love how the artist wasn't afraid to give her some muscles. Yes, women have biceps, this is not a "masculine" feature any more than ripping abs are a masculine feature. But she is too brazen, too bold, too exposed and confident, you can see how this can be misrepresented? Like how they misrepresented Lara Croft.

BTW, I am not misrepresenting Sarkeesian's views, she has said MUCH on this and made herself very clear and had a chorus of approval of her blanket derision of women being possibly perceived as sexual in video games or anywhere in the media.

The problem is any female who is recognisably female can be made to be sexual. Kratos is not considered sexual wearing as little as a loin cloth but it is because of people's prejudices that they will always see a women who doesn't cover what is recognisably female as sexual exhibitionism.

The "sexy nun" thing, there is no male equivalent, because it is almost impossible to sexualise men but conservatives with see sex negative in any woman who is distinctly female.

Your ideal female Kratos like in the comic design you gave as an example, that WILL be attacked by the likes of Sarkeesian as being no different from Hitman's sexy nuns. They make no distinction. Consider the tragedy of Lara Croft.

PS: I don't know if these people who attack women for showing their bodies could honestly call themselves "feminist" but many are very clear in attacking the depiction of women being physically fit and beautiful as destructive because it sets an unreasonably high standard that causes dysfunctional attitude to health and beauty, and they they claim this is sexism. As if no men would be under the same pressure to be lean, ripped and well hung.

No one is attacking the female characters for being attractive. Like I said the unattainable body type is not an issue here.

You seem to be distracted with the thought that feminists want female characters to be wrapped up head to toe. That isn't the case and is just false.

What they and I would like is for female characters to be more than eye candy in both appearance and the way they are presented. Female heroines could be similar in build to olympic athletes not underwear models. Unfortunately you get this opinion from devs that the first thing about a female character should be how attractive she is to a man. Like the space marine game dev who said 'We could put female characters in but how could we make them sexy?'

Miranda in Mass Effect 2 is a good example. She is capable and intelligent yet the camera constantly hovers around her bum, she wears tight clothing and heels in combat situations and one can not escape the fact that the devs are bascially putting this woman across as a sex object. Why even do that...why do male gamers need that dynamic. Why can't we just have a female character who isn't there for YOU and is just a character in her own right.

I can't really exert how annoying it is to have this constant reminder that you aren't the intended audience in the most skeevy way possible.

The real problem you have is excess(as defined by Yahtzee), game publishers and more importantly advertisers.
I simply can not stress enough how bad anyone working in marketing is. Every time they want to make an advertizement for a household item, a food or drink item or sometimes even cars to be shown on TV they make men out to be complete idiots because then most people watching are women and the men they the ones who they think are the lowest common denominator(meaning they think of those men as much less intelligent than themselves) so they have the same mentality when advertizing games. So if you want to fix this problem every time a guy tells you he works in advertizing, kick him in the balls and tell all your friends to do the same and don't worry, the police will never arrest you for it and most women seeing it will actually support you and a man seeing it won't do anything. This would be the one instance of this which no one on the Escapist would have a problem with.

 

[Voulan]

Oh come on. Just do it anyway - I'd be offended if they actually did censor themselves like this. I'm not going to scream rage just because I get to fight my own gender. Do they think women can't handle it or something?

 

[Treblaine]

That was the comment the guy made at E3 about the reboot. I was explaining to the guy I quoted what the issue was recently. Why are you trying to make out I meant the old games :|

Well, you could have been more specific. And your objection to the idea of being toughened up by threatening situations apply to the older series where her back story is she survived alone in the wilderness for 2 weeks. And the weird theory of "gamers want to protect Lara, not identify with her" has been floating around WELL before E3 2012. As far back as 1998:

Smith, Jonathan (December 1998). "Lara Swings Again". Arcade: The Videogame Magazine (Future Publishing) (1): 46?55.

Cohen, Mark (2000-04-24). "The Desire of the Toy". Lara Croft: The Art of Virtual Seduction. Prima Publishing. pp. 106?109. ISBN 978-0-7615-2696-4.

It doesn't make any sense though, these "studies" are not very scientific in terms of control-groups and careful analysis of data but use highly inductive reasoning. Being that Tomb Raider Publisher was foolish enough to repeat these patronising and merely superficially scientific studies reflects on his ignorance, not the conceit of the actual auteur(s) behind the project.

The romances aren't the issue you can have a romance with a male character as femshep. Again you are completely missing the point.

The point is that you can't avoid the fact that your screen is filled up with Miranda's butt and that she is put across in a sexual way. She isn't a character in her own right she is primarily there to look sexy for the guys.

It's unnecessary and is the point that female gamers are try to get across. We want our videogame characters to be people not sex objects.

One of the best examples of female characters is Avatar: The Last Airbender where the female characters have a wide range of personalities and react just as heroically or evil as the male characters.

Yes, Miranda is sexual, so is Vamp in Metal Gear Solid, to a much greater extent. There is sexuality in video games. Deal with it.

You have GOT to stop using the term 'sex object' inappropriately. Sexy =/= object. That's kind of a fundamental thing.

I haven't played Mass Effect 2, but I can still tell from a but of research that you still see quite a variety of female character types with Jack as opposed to Miranda. And others:

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Characters#Mass_Effect_2

So I don't really see what your problem is with one character out of many being depicted in that way, that's just the way Miranda is, she is only one of many female characters to be like that. It isn't at the detriment at any other depiction of female in the game.

I also think you are a bit too paranoid over how men view women, I watched cutscenes on youtube of ME2 which include Miranda, what kind of human beings do you think men are if they are driven wild by such tame shots of s camera shot where... ooooh, you can see her bum. Come on. This is nothing, if Miranda is typical example it's not that bad, it's not like say how Megan Fox was depicted in the Transformers movies, that was lewd and crude and everyone knew it and it was too much, I didn't like it. Bending over like THAT to look at an engine... what, as if Shia's character would have ignored her otherwise.